Back at the beginning of September I was surprised to discover that tons of flax seeds which I’d dumped out of a retting tank in the back yard had managed to germinate, despite having been waterlogged and fermented, and still being in their pods. You can read my original post here.
After I came back from the very inspiring flax processing workshop at Rhinebeck in October, I decided retting was done for the season even though I had one more portion of the 2012 crop left to ret. So, on Sunday October 21st I poured out several buckets of water I’d been saving. As I was dumping the water onto the grass, I was amazed to spy dozens of flax plants growing in the lawn beside our apartment, under the shade of a huge spruce.
Below you can see how well it was competing with the grass, gill-over-the-ground, dandelions, and other plants.
In the photo below you can see that it was respectably tall.
And below is a close-up showing how lush and happy it was.
So, dumping out unrippled, retted seeds on the lawn did not deter them one bit.
On November 10th they were still growing strong, though the grass was taller.
Below is a patch of flax soaking up the sun (which only hits the back yard for a few hours a day at this time of year).
We have had many nights of 20 degree weather by this point, and it is starting to look a little stressed out. It didn’t help that the building and grounds guy for our apartment complex mowed the lawn the other day. But the flax is determined to grow. Amazing.
Here it is this evening, November 23rd, around sunset.
