Flax Farming

    One of the slightly odd things about coastal California is that we have two, nearly similar, growing seasons. One is the traditional growing season, when seeds or plants go into the ground in the spring, grow through the summer, and are harvested in the fall. Our days are warm, our nights are (mostly) cool, and if there's enough water, the harvest is good.

    But coastal California has a second growing season. This one starts in October or November, when the days are still warm, and the nights aren't quite below freezing. It ends in mid- to late April, just about the time it's warm enough to plant tomatoes. This growing season features cooler days, and colder nights, and...rain. Get the seeds into the ground early enough, keep them moist enough to germinate, and then--in most years--Mother Nature can take over the irrigation schedule.

    I went to a couple presentations on growing flax given by Chico Flax last month. Flax is a near-perfect winter crop for California: plant it in the fall, give it a little water to start, then simply let it grow. Flax loves cool weather, doesn't mind freezing nights, and is ready for harvesting about the time everything is warming up in spring. I've wanted to try growing my own flax, so I bought some Linum usitatissimum 'Suzanne' seeds with the goal of producing a tiny crop of my own.

    Yesterday was flax planting day. The garden itself is rather a mess: I've been away the past couple of years during the prime periods for working in the garden, so very little beyond the perennial bed in front of the house has been cared for, and my herb garden is mostly dead. However, this time of year is perfect for garden clean-up, transplanting, and generally reorganizing the garden. There are two tiny raised beds at the foot of the back garden: those beds are the only places that gets full sun all day (a requirement for flax), and won't be planted with vegetables until the spring, so the flax goes there. The soil is "ok"--the beds have lain fallow for two years, and have never been exposed to any chemicals--so there wasn't a lot of prep work needed, other than a good soaking to moisten the soil. Once moist, I simply dragged my fingers through the soil to create some shallow furrows, then broadcast the seeds over everything. After evening out the soil to cover the seeds, I pressed the soil down a little bit to make sure the seeds were in contact with it, then gave everything a good misting. According to Chico Flax, the seeds should germinate within 7-10 days. 

    Now, about that madder bed...