Flax is a hardy, easy to grow plant

Typically you will plant it in early spring. I have planted mine in mid April. It is ready to harvest in about 100 days. I have harvested mine usually early/mid July. 

However, you can plant later in the season. For example, in 2023 the Lisette seeds arrived very late, so they were planted in June and harvested in late August. 

It requires little care, light watering. Deer have no interest in eating it, or that has been my experience! 

Flax is also beneficial to the soil as it removes heavy metals. 

Getting from plant to linen

Growing flax is easy! However, getting it into a spin-able fiber is a multi step manual process. 

• Flax must be harvested manually, pulling the plant out of the ground. It is easy to pull as the roots are not very deep. You do this to maintain the fiber length all the way through the root. 
• Once harvested the basic steps are:
  1. Ripple (remove the seed bols)
  2. Rett (basically, “rot” the plant so the outer plant stalk separates from the bast fiber)
  3. Break (use a tool to break the plant so the outer stalk can be removed from the fiber)
  4. Scutch (use a scraping tool to “scutch” the stalk from the fiber)
  5. Hackle (use a hackel tool to comb the scutched plant, remove remaining stalk, and leave you with spinable fiber)

You now have a fiber that can be spun into linen

When you spin the flax, you now have Linen. Linen is best used in weaving. 

Flax fibers were the main source of cloth until the growth of the cotton industry in the 1800s.

Flax fiber is soft, lustrous, and flexible; bundles of fiber have the appearance of blonde hair, hence the description “flaxen” hair. I

 Flax fiber is soft, lustrous and flexible, stronger than cotton fiber but less elastic.