Well, apparently I have to include a lot of exclamation points in this flax growing experiment. I will cut that out. But it’s so exciting!
The flax began emerging on Friday April 20th. The first two to emerge were the Evelin at Amethyst Farm and the Marilyn at our community garden. That’s five days to germinate. By the next day, Saturday April 21st, everything was up everywhere. That’s six days. Not bad.
Here’s the progress as of yesterday, Tuesday April 24th (the 9th day since planting). My sense is that the generic variety did not have a very good germination rate. I will try to figure out an accurate way to estimate or calculate that, but the growth of the v.n.s. seedlings looks much more sparse than the other two. Another possibility is that the golden v.n.s. seeds on average weighed more than the brown seeded varieties, so that I actually planted fewer golden seeds even though the amount weighed the same. Maybe I should have done it by volume rather than weight. I will try to figure this out, also.
Here is an overview of part of the v.n.s. bed at Small Ones Farm, and below that, a close-up of a bald spot. To some extent, of course, bald spots are my fault for not sowing evenly.
However, I think it is also because a lot of seeds just didn’t germinate. Here’s a closeup of v.n.s. seedlings at Small Ones Farm.
Below is an over-view of part of the Evelin bed at Small Ones Farm. Below that, you can see there were also bald spots in the Evelin, but I don’t think they were as big.
And here’s a close-up of the Evelin at Small Ones Farm.
Moving on to Amethyst Farm, here is the v.n.s. at a distance, closer (yeah, not much there), and very close:
Here’s the Evelin at Amethyst Farm, overview, then closer, then a close-up:
And at our community garden, the v.n.s. (the holes are dog prints):
Here’s the Evelin at the community garden:
And here is the Marilyn (the only treated seed I planted) at the community garden:
And that is the flax update. Stay tuned for future flax-growing excitement featuring visual aids such as rulers and a string grid (maybe 6 by 6 square inches) to count plant density. Woo hoo!