The Bloom is Nearly Off the Stalks

My visit to the Gale Woods Farm flax this morning revealed fewer flowers and more seed capsules that are turning brown. We remain on track for harvesting at the end of August!

The harvest this year is going to be interesting. Because of my tight schedule this summer and the continuously rainy, hot, humid, smoky weather, I haven't been able to tend the plot as it should have been tended. The actual flax stalk rows aren't too nasty with weeds, although the plot edges are buried in grasses, thistles, etc. It is even hard to see how the stalks are maturing, let alone get close to them! 

While trying to pull a few of the more massive grasses, I accidentally pulled a stalk. 

It is the length of much of the crop—32 inches—but branching has started halfway up the stalk, so the useful fiber will only be about 16 inches when it's processed. (Branching is preferred in the top 1/5 of the stalk for the best long fiber extraction.) Plus, the stalks appear to be thicker in circumference this year. I feared this would happen with the wider spacing between the rows. (See my earlier post about how the seeds were sown this year.) Of course, it may not be just the spacing issue that has caused this. Other factors, such as late sowing and the weather conditions, could have played a part. When I visit the flax next week, I will reach into the tighter rows to see if they have more favorable stalks. It was so miserably hot and humid in the field today, I didn't hang around for very long!

An Opportunity to Learn More About Bast Fibers at the Minnesota State Fair!

If you're in Minnesota on Friday, August 22nd, come to the Minnesota State Fair, Creative Activities Building. I will be presenting Flax as a Textile Fiber and demonstrating the mechanical breaking process that gleans the fiber from the stalk. My presentation/demonstration will be on the Weavers Guild of Minnesota's (WGM) new stage. It will be repeated three times, at 10 AM, Noon, and 1:30 PM. 

If you can't make it on the 22nd, there are two other days highlighting bast fibers on the new WGM stage: On Monday, August 25th, Matt Holen, a researcher in the Horticultural Science Department of the University of Minnesota, will be presenting Cultivating Perennial Flax for Textiles. (His project is the one that has kept me busy for most of the summer.) And, on Friday, August 29th, Tom Michaels, also from the University of Minnesota, Department of Horticultural Science, will be presenting Hemp as a Textile Fiber in Minnesota. We are certainly loving the bast fibers this summer!

Sowing the 2025 Summer of Flax 

from research activities to getting hands dirty

The past couple of months have been busy here at Saga Hill! As usual, keeping up with the blog is a back-burner activity. But it's time to share what is happening!

Between preparing and teaching fiber classes (primarily knitting). . .

My linen cloth knitting workshop at the American Swedish Institute

. . . and giving presentations about flax history, growing, and processing this spring, I have been contracted by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) to process a huge amount of perennial flax for study by the Horticultural Science Department of the University of Minnesota. They are looking at the fiber viability of different cultivars of perennial flax, which typically have a very short stalk and lots of flower branching that breaks up the stalk into shorter pieces. (Flax that is typically used for fiber, aka linen, is derived from the annual flax plant, which is taller, has less flower branching, and is more biologically suited for long fiber extraction.) 

The promise of finding a good perennial flax for fiber use is exciting since perennial flax is more suited to growing in the upper Midwest and is harvested by cutting the stalk at the root crown, which might allow the plant to have more than one harvest in a year. It is also easier to harvest with common farm equipment. Plus, finding a suitable perennial flax for fiber use would open an even broader scope of applications, not just for linen but for bio-industrial use. 

The flowers from my home perennial flax plants have already started blooming.

It is very exciting to be part of this research venture! However, the project’s completion timeline is very tight due to a funding deadline. I have over 40 laundry-sized bags and bundles of perennial flax to process by hand into fibers by the end of July, and our weather, so far, has not been especially cooperative for the first step—the retting (rotting) of the stalks to release the fibers found in the bast material. 

I am using cattle stock tanks to ret the perennial flax cultivars.

As you can see above, I am using stock tanks to ret the fibers, which would normally be a great method for retting if the weather were warm. But this year, it’s a challenge to keep the tank temperatures in a good range for retting. It’s been quite cold and rainy for the past few weeks. And, with not enough electrical outlets, I don’t have the option of plugging in heaters for all five tanks. Fortunately, the tanks are black and absorb ambient heat rather well. I also found black covers for the tanks that hold the water at a surprisingly steady temperature, even if it is cooler than I’d like to see due to ambient temperature fluctuations. All-in-all, the next two months will be a time of discovery in the wider world of linum usitatissimum! However, please note that I won’t be able to share my findings, as this is a research project. But perhaps when the study report is released, I will have an opportunity to tell you more.

Gale Woods Farm—a new annual flax crop has begun for the summer of 2025

Due to the uncooperative weather this spring, the planned crop at Gale Woods Farm has had a slow start but has now suddenly taken on literal growth! 

We were coming to the end of the flax sowing season at the end of May, and, due to the weather and other farm issues, the seeds had not been sown yet, so the farm’s garden manager decided to use a grain drill to plant the crop this year. It was the quickest method of sowing the seeds during such rainy weather, and an efficient means of finally getting the seeds into the ground before it’s too late for the sowing of linen flax. (Early spring is the best time to sow annual flax—early April is best for our region.) 

Grain drills sow the seeds in rows, and the grain drill that the farm used is really set for perennial seed flax sowing, not annual flax. That means the seeds were sown in rows that are somewhat far apart, ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches apart. But when annual flax is sown in rows, the usual goal is to sow it in rows with little space between them so the stalks will grow with less branching and support each other. It will be interesting to see how the stalks mature this summer between the wider-spaced rows and the narrower ones. Will some branch out too much to achieve good fiber for linen? Time will tell!

The Gale Woods Farm annual flax plot for 2025.

About 100 lineal feet of seeds were sown on May 27^th, and the seedlings emerged around June 4^th. This year’s seeds came from last year’s farm crop of Avian linen flax that we rippled from the stalks at the end of last summer. The farm garden manager conducted a seed test in early spring to assess seed viability. There was an approximate 90 percent germination rate, so we knew the seeds would be good for this year’s crop. 

The test seeds were sown in a greenhouse flat.

Since it feels like murder to me to toss any baby seedlings, I planted the flax seedlings from the seed test into pots at my home/studio. I’ve planted annual flax in pots in the past, but have found that they grow to a certain height and then lodge and die off. This year, I used soil with no added nitrogen (extra nitrogen can cause lodging). I’ve also learned that even though the roots of the annual flax plant appear to be very short—actually only a few inches long—there are finer, hairy roots that go much deeper. So, I planted the seedlings in deeper pots than I have in the past (in pots with a 9-inch soil depth) in hopes of getting these stalks to make it to maturity.

 

The test flax seeds have grown into tall potted plants!

I might find that I need even deeper pots, as the stalks are now 24 inches tall and seem to be slowing down in growth. Since they have been growing for 60 days (from when they were sown in the greenhouse flat), they are due to flower soon, so perhaps they are putting their energy into developing the flower capsules, or they are stunted by a pot that is too shallow for their full growth. If they are nearing the end of their growth and about to put out seed capsules, the stalks will be shorter than last year’s crop, which averaged around 40+ inches. But I suspect the height difference is due to growing in a pot that is still too shallow for their full maturity. After 60 days of growth, the flowers should be starting to appear, and they are not. As a comparison, it will be interesting to see how tall the flax from the same seed supply grows in the field this summer, where the ground depth is unlimited.

The Annual Flax Crop at the Farm Today

This morning, I went out to Gale Woods to see if the seedling rows needed weeding. A benefit to growing them in rows is that the weed situation is easier to manage. Plus, due to closer management of the seedbed, there were very few weeds to pull. 

The plants are already about 1–2 inches tall after one week of emergence. They like the current cool, rainy weather, so that is a good aspect of this fickle June. 

Come out to Gale Woods Farm to visit the crop (7210 County Rd 110 W, Minnetrista, MN 55364)! You will find it in the field located on the right, just after you enter the gates of the farm. Look to the far back end of the cultivated area. The flax rows are at the far right-hand end of the field, running south to north. Since annual flax (linen flax), when grown in a field, typically takes 60 days to flower, be sure to schedule a visit around the middle to the last week of July. But come anytime to see the stalks grow taller and taller! 

A view of baby flax sprouts at ground level – Gale Woods Farm, June 10, 2025.

Flax Season is Springing Ahead in 2025, and other news!

But first, I realized that I never put up a blog about the linen flax processing demo at last fall's Harvest Festival at Gale Woods Farm (an educational farm in the Twin Cities Three Rivers Park District). It was a fabulous event! Absolutely packed with visitors. I send out a thank you to all who dropped by my demonstration area to learn how linen flax is mechanically processed from stalk to spinnable fiber. The farm plans to repeat the event this fall, and I'll continue to blog about this year's crop (yes, there will be one—see the end of this blog post) as the season comes nearer.

I was so busy demonstrating that I never had a chance to photograph the activity, but here are images of my demonstration area:

Perennial Flax and the University of Minnesota

Now, I want to catch you up on what has happened over the past few months. Late last year, the University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science contracted with me to process some of their experimental perennial flax. The goal was to see how three different varieties might be processed into textile fiber. 

Since the work needed to occur during the winter months, I put a large cattle feeder tub in my basement, put an aquarium heater into the tub, filled the tub with water, and placed three groups of experimental perennial stalks into the tub. (It was actually a re-ret of stalks that had been retted for about a week at the U of M but still were not retted enough for mechanical processing.)

Cattle feeder tub with an aquarium heater in the center.

The flax stalks were placed into the water to soak. I placed dish tubs filled with water to weigh down the flax stalks so they would be fully submerged in the vat.

The process took a total of 14 days, with 12 of those at a steady temperature of 88° F. After the first day, the vat started to show a skim of bacterial matter on the water’s surface. Yay! That was a good sign things were happening. 

The bubbles show bacterial action happening in the vat. The rotting of the stalks has begun!

Shortly after that, the smell started. Ooh la la! Our basement stunk! But it was all for the cause of science! Having a husband who doesn’t seem to have a sense of smell helped! My dog, on the other hand, thought the vat was really yummy smelling, so I needed to take special measures to keep her from drinking the vat water. 

When the stalks showed signs of breaking down, I cooled the vat down for 24 hours, pulled the stalks, rinsed them, and set them out to dry on clothes racks.

I kept the groups tied during the entire retting and drying process in order to know which variety was which. I loosened the ties a bit while they were drying to allow air to get around the stalks.

After about a week of drying, they were ready to break and mechanically process. Perennial flax stalks are known to be much stiffer and harder to break than linen (annual flax) stalks, and that proved to be true. The cellular structure of perennial flax is different than what is found in linen flax. Nevertheless, I was able to break the stalks down and ultimately release fibers. The tops, where the flowers emerge from branches, broke off, even crumbled, into waste matter. That was not surprising since the flowering branches are the weakest part of a perennial flax stalk. And since there are more flowers in the perennial varieties of flax than in linen flax, the branches that carry the flowers create several breaking points in the stalk.

The stalks were very firm before breaking them.

Annual (linen) flax is pulled when harvested, roots and all, but perennial flax is cut at the ground level to allow it to regrow from the root crown, so there were no roots on these perennial stalks. What remained was the main stalk to finish breaking, scutching (scraping off the boon—the woody matter that contains the fibers), and hackling the remaining stalk matter into fine fibers that could be spun.

Perennial flax after scutching off the boon with a scutching knife (the knife is the wooden tool hanging off the side of the scutching board).

Two of the three varieties showed similar qualities in color and fiber length. They were a dark tan color and fairly short—twelve inches or so. 

I used three hackles—coarse, medium, and fine—to hackle the scutched fibers. This image is of the perennial flax that was the longest and finest of all the varieties. The tow that resulted from the hackling process is in front. There was a LOT of tow! That can be blended with wool for spinning or used in a variety of other ways. Firestarters and paper making are some uses!

The third variety, shown above, was quite nice as a potential textile fiber. Although it was shorter than a typical linen flax fiber, about 18 inches long, it was lighter in color and fine enough for spinning.

I will continue to test additional perennial varieties this spring and post the results here as the University allows the information to be shared.

Linen Flax at Gale Woods in 2025

Back to the annual variety: linen flax! Another plot of linen flax is being planned for this spring at Gale Woods Farm. I have been invited to champion it again this year, perhaps once more as a volunteer if funding for a contract position doesn't come through. (To potentially not be funded for my time is disappointing, but I am committed to seeing another crop come into bloom and having the opportunity to share this wonderful fiber with our community!)

The first step of the work has begun! A germination test of seeds from last year's stalks was started at the farm by the garden supervisor, Greg. As of April 14^th, 110 of 130 seeds from last year’s rippled flax stalks have sprouted in a flat in the farm greenhouse! We are happy with that response. 

This image was from April 11th, when about 3/4s of the linen flax seeds had germinated. More came up in the following days.

There are even several stalks coming up under the greenhouse table rack, where the seeds fell into the underlying soil during the rippling process last fall. Since they are “volunteers,” they are growing quickly in the warm greenhouse environment and are already a few inches tall! Unfortunately, many will need to be sacrificed so the farm staff can get the garden crops started in flats on the table rack. I plan to rescue a few of these to put in pots at my house. I am giving up on trying to grow linen flax in the ground around my home since I have too much shade for a successful crop. I can find a sunny place in my driveway for pots, though.

One More Item to Share

Recently, I was asked to write an article about linen flax in Norway for the Norwegian Textile Letter, an international publication based in the Twin Cities. In the article "Linen Flax in Norway: Past, Present, Future,” along with other pertinent Norwegian flax news, I talk about how Norway is taking part in the Grow One Square Meter of Flax movement that is sweeping the world! Enjoy the article! https://norwegiantextileletter.com/article/flax-in-norway/

A Perennial Reveal

Those following my blog may recall that the University of Minnesota Horticultural Research folks visited Gale Woods Farm a couple of months ago to see the linen flax crop. They gave me a few bundles of their perennial flax, which they had retted, to try to process mechanically. I finally got around to doing that, and here is the result:

I first tried to break the flax with my flax brake and found the stalks as hard as steel! To me, that indicated that either the perennial flax needed more retting or the stalks would need another method of breaking. I leaned toward requiring a longer retting than the 1–2 weeks that the University had already done. 

So, I put one bundle into my puppy pool to soak a bit longer. I don't have photos of the flax in the pool—it was rather unexciting, to be honest, since there was no obvious biological action happening—at least the bubbling you typically see with retting flax was very minor. The weather was warm (mostly 80 degrees), but my yard had limited sun, so it was not as ideal as the Gale Woods greenhouse. Nevertheless, after 11 days, I finally saw some release in the fiber strands as I bent the stalks. It was time to pull the stalks, rinse them, and let them dry as a re-test of the mechanical processing!

I took a small handful of stalks to break since they were still very stiff and did not easily break in the brake. (I don't know why brakes are not spelled "break" since that is what the equipment does, but that's the nomenclature for that piece of equipment!)

The stalks were finally breakable! There are certainly differences between the linen variety of flax grown at Gale Woods Farm and this perennial variety grown for seed and straw use. Besides the length of the stalks (this variety of perennial flax is about a foot shorter than the linen flax), there is obviously something different about the cellular structure between the varieties. I observed that the boon (woody matter of the stem) of the perennial variety hangs onto the fiber strands much more tightly than it did in the linen flax variety.  

I was able to break enough fiber to scutch and hackle. Above is what the stalks looked like after breaking. 

There is a substantial amount of boon to scrape off after breaking—more than with the linen variety of flax!

Success! After putting the broken and scutched (scraped) fiber through three grades of hackles (coarse to fine), I ended up with a small bundle of short but spinnable fibers. They are a bit coarse, although they can be spun with a tow-spinning method. (That comment is for all of you flax spinners. You will know what I mean!)

My conclusion is that, yes, you can grow perennial flax for its fiber content. Although it takes longer to ret and mechanically process, you can get some short, spinnable fibers. It won't create fine linen thread, though. I plan to try spinning this into a wool/linen blend yarn, which is more suited to a shorter fiber preparation called "woolsey," also called "linsey-woolsey!"

Now, I'm going back to spinning some of the Gale Woods linen flax, so I have samples of that for the Fall Fest at Gale Woods Farm on October 13th! I hope to see you there!