When is flax ready to harvest

Flax is either grown for food or fiber, but most of the flax in North America is grown for the seeds. Flax is also used as fiber to make linen textiles, like the ones used to wrap mummies. Flaxseed is grown more like a grain than a seed and requires roughly 58 gallons of water per pound of flaxseed.

Flaxseed takes 90 to days to go from first seed to flaxseed and are ready to harvest after the time blue, white, or light pink flowers and bloomed and died back. Flaxseed is also known as linseed in some circles. Flax can be used as a replacement for eggs in vegan recipes when mixed with water.

The plants, which are grown for their long, luxurious bast fiber, are pulled up by the roots in order to maximize the length of the fiber.

This toughens the linen fiber in the stems and you will not get soft, fine linen fibers that are also strong. If the plants dry out in the field and turn brown, the fiber becomes brittle and there is a greater percentage of waste when the plants are processed for fiber. When linen flax is ready for harvesting, flowering has stopped. One or two flowers may be visible in the field but predominantly each stalk has only seed bolls visible.

The seed has formed in the seed bolls but it is still white or pale brown and immature, inside the boll. This is the optimal time for harvest. If the field was planted in a single day, the window of optimal harvest may be only a day or two. So be prepared to put aside other activities to get the harvest in efficiently.

Harvest on a dry day. Never harvest in the rain. The wet plants will heat up and the core of your bundles will rot and mold instead of continuing to mature in the shook as they should. Harvest by pulling up handfuls of linen stalks by the roots. Linen seeds are very fertile, and grow very well, in the moist cool climates of Northern and Middle Europe. The better you prepare the ground, before sowing, the better your crop.

I use a hoe to make furrows, or drills, about a foot apart, then I sow the seed by hand in the furrows, and cover them over with soil, using my feet. This is something I still find quite tricky. The seeds will probably germinate quite quickly, and soon appear above the surface. Hoe inbetween the rows as soon as you can, to get rid of the weeds.

The better you prepared the ground, the less weeds there will be. Over the next few weeks,keep hoeing inbetween the rows. When the plants get very tall, hoeing becomes very difficult, so you can enjoy the flowers, and wait for the seed heads to appear. Even if you mess it up, the fibre you get will be millions times better than anything you could buy in the shops.

Basically, you should harvest the plants before the seeds are fully ripe. The stems will have started to turn yellow at the bottom, and the seed heads will also have turned from green to yellow. If you harvest the plants now, the seed heads will dry out, and the seeds will ripen on the plants, and can be collected, and sown next year.

If you harvest the plants earlier as some people recommend , the seeds will stay unripe, and cannot be used. Or you can make your own flax ripple see Rippling Flax page!

You might like to save the seed, as it might well be ripe enough to sow the following year. You then need to ret the fibre, and this is something you learn by experience. You can store unretted flax through the winter, just make sure it is in a place safe from mice. Top of page.