Rosalind
Deeply Rooted
Not sure where to put this.
This year, I put four beds into experimental chicken feed. One plant I'm growing for the feed, both for protein and fatty acid content, is flax for flax seed.
After planting, it suddenly occurred to me that I will have a bunch of flax plants post-seed-removal, and I could try making them into linen. Granted, this is going to be about enough linen to make a pocket hanky, but it's the principle of the thing. I was impressed with how easy it was to prep the ground and how quickly it germinated and grew--already got little plantlets, and I only scattered seeds on the ground about two weeks ago. They managed to crowd out the weeds quickly and hardly any of our resident songbirds ate them. It's the sort of thing that is so freakin' unbelievably easy to grow that I'll probably plant it elsewhere in some other context.
Has anyone here ever grown flax for linen? My understanding is that it's more difficult to spin than wool. I have a cheesy drop spindle from a local living history museum, but I could get a nicer one if needed. I think I've got a handle on the whole retting process, but is there anything tricky about it? I'm guessing the water used for retting will be too ooky for the garden, but could it be diluted and used on acid-loving plants like blueberries?
This year, I put four beds into experimental chicken feed. One plant I'm growing for the feed, both for protein and fatty acid content, is flax for flax seed.
After planting, it suddenly occurred to me that I will have a bunch of flax plants post-seed-removal, and I could try making them into linen. Granted, this is going to be about enough linen to make a pocket hanky, but it's the principle of the thing. I was impressed with how easy it was to prep the ground and how quickly it germinated and grew--already got little plantlets, and I only scattered seeds on the ground about two weeks ago. They managed to crowd out the weeds quickly and hardly any of our resident songbirds ate them. It's the sort of thing that is so freakin' unbelievably easy to grow that I'll probably plant it elsewhere in some other context.
Has anyone here ever grown flax for linen? My understanding is that it's more difficult to spin than wool. I have a cheesy drop spindle from a local living history museum, but I could get a nicer one if needed. I think I've got a handle on the whole retting process, but is there anything tricky about it? I'm guessing the water used for retting will be too ooky for the garden, but could it be diluted and used on acid-loving plants like blueberries?
