Update on the 2013 flax fields

Last year I did an experiment and grew a wee field of flax. It was a terrific learning experience, so much so that I repeated the experiment this year. This year, instead of obtaining my seed stock from the bulk bins at Save-On Foods, I purchased the actual flax for linen variety from Richters in Goodwood, Ontario. The seed variety is Linum usitatissiumum "Evelin". I bought two kilos of it.

Yep, two kilos. That's a lot of seed. Who knew?

So I planted a bed. And then realized that I scarcely made a dent in the seed stock, so a week or so later planted another bed on the north side of the house. Then, when the 100-year old oak had to be taken down, we had a chance to put in a new garden with nine beds. We planted up several of those beds, the others that we just wanted to reserve, were sown with flax. I now have four beds of flax that are thankfully, in various stages of growth.

Here's the photo shoot:

Bed #1 planted in the same spot as it was planted last year. It's already blooming. Flax blooms in the morning and then it's done. These photos were taken mid-morning.

Here's bed #2. I did nothing special to this bed in terms of preparation, just raked up the soil a bit to loosen the top layer and then broadcast the seeds quite thickly. It gets more sun than bed #1 so it's catching up. It just started blooming today.

Here's bed #3 and you can see bed #4 as a green ribbon at the top of the photo. Both of these beds were planted about two weeks ago. The soil, rock hard river silt, was turned and knocked about a bit. And then I threw in the flax seeds as a way to save the bed, and keep the weeds at bay. If I get a harvest from this, that will be grand, but I'm already up to my eye balls in flax and a potential nightmare retting process. Thinking about getting a kiddy-pool to help me out with that.

Here's the new garden. It gets full-on sunshine so it will be the hot-spot. Here's were we will grow tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and other heat loving veggies. Lot's more work to do on it, but it's a good start.