The Bloom is Off the Linen Flax

and the 30-day countdown begins!

I visited the Gale Woods Farm flax plot last Friday, July 19, and found the blooms essentially done. There were only a handful of flowers in bloom and multiple capsules. (The capsules are the “ovaries” left behind after the bloom. These capsules contain flax seeds that may be rippled [removed] when the stalks are fully mature, harvested, and dried. They may also be left in the field on some unharvested stalks to mature even further, and those can be used for next year's sowing.)

Based on what I saw when I last visited the plot on July 11th and the state of the bloom on the 19th, I am calling July 15th to be the height of the bloom (69 days since the initial sowing) and the date to begin the 30-day waiting period before harvesting. After 30 days, so around August 15th, the stalks should be fully matured, and the harvest may begin. This is right in the ballpark with the 100-day maturation expectation for linen flax, counting from the sowing date to the harvest date.

But there is always something to discover when I visit the plot. This time, I noticed that the plot had a “visitor” who went through the center of the 4-foot-wide plot and lodged several of the center stalks. 

Unless it was a very precise downdraft of wind, the visitor was most likely a rabbit, raccoon, or some sort of small to medium-sized critter that wandered through the plot. At this stage, the stalks shouldn't be affected by such lodging, so we will let them lay as they are. Hopefully, that will be the only intruder in the plot by mid-August, when harvesting will begin!