- What is made from flax?
- Grow flax in your own garden
- The right location for flax in the garden
- Flax hardly needs care
- When can flax or linen be harvested?
Flax, also known as flax, is considered to be the oldest cultivated plant in the world. The first items of clothing were made from flax in very early times. The useful plant can also be grown in your own garden - because of the blue flowers or to harvest fibers and linseed.
Flax can also be preferred
What is made from flax?
- Fibers for clothing, linen fabrics, spines of books
- Linseed oil for food and machine industry
- Linseed for nutrition and animal feed
Grow flax in your own garden
If you are planning to grow flax in the garden yourself, you must first consider what is important to you. If you want to harvest the fibers for fabrics, you need particularly high-growing varieties.
For harvesting linseed as grain or for pressing for oil production, there are low linseed varieties in which the seeds have a particularly high oil content.
The right location for flax in the garden
Flax likes it a little warmer. Flax tolerates frost very poorly. Choose a slightly sheltered location with well-drained, dry soil that should be low in nitrogen.
Only sow flax in areas where no other flax varieties have previously been grown for at least four years. If the time interval is shorter, fungi will form in the soil, causing the young plants to rot.
Linen is sown at the end of March or beginning of April. However, severe frost is no longer to be expected. Flax is a long-day crop, so it needs a lot of light. Flax grows particularly quickly in May and June.
Flax hardly needs care
You only have to fertilize flax varieties that you grow for fiber production. A fertilizer based on phosphorus and potassium ensures particularly strong, long fibers. Oil flax is not fertilized.
Water sparingly. Flax for fiber needs more moisture than flax for oil production.
When can flax or linen be harvested?
Flax is ready for harvest 110 to 120 days after sowing. It is then pulled by hand, including the roots. It is ideal if the plants are harvested a week before they are fully ripe.
tips
It is not for nothing that the base of paintings is called canvas. The fabric is made from flax, i.e. linen. It can be woven very finely and is almost lint-free.