Planting record

[igenlode]

More planting (despite the chill): some flax, in the hopes of getting a usable crop of linseed (I got a decent number of seeds off my single random flax plant last year, presumably dropped or blown in from a bird-feeder, but not enough to eat if I wanted to save any for planting), and a dozen marigold seeds sown two to a compartment in an old biscuit-tray :-p

Corn-marigolds, corn-chamomile and calendulas I probably don't need to sow at all, although I have the saved seed, since they are popping up everywhere; very few of the poppies that are putting on adult leaves seem to be the Oriental poppies (possibly not so cold-hardy), so I might want to sow a few of those. I still need to plant Swan River daisies, cornflowers, nasturtiums, probably rudbeckias (the one that over-wintered doesn't look all that healthy), chives, probably alyssum, mesembryanthemums, rocket and basil. I do have some saved chrysanthemum seed since it seemed wasteful not to harvest it, but it is now two years old and the plants weren't a great success at the time...

Comments

[igenlode]

I quite like it in salad, but I wouldn't have thought of trying to grow it as a crop if I hadn't had that one pretty blue flower that self-sowed itself and then turned out to produce seeds identical in appearance to the commercial ones... though I'd assume the latter are probably treated to prevent them from sprouting :(


Apparently it actually does well in not very fertile soils:
https://plantura.garden/uk/flowers-perennials/flax/flax-overview

[watervole]

I wonder how much space you'd need to produce the equivalent of a small packet of flax seeds... (ie 500 grams). But our allotment has pretty good soil, so might not be ideal.

[igenlode]

Well, I got probably less than half a teaspoon of seeds off one flax plant; I wouldn't like to think how many teaspoons it takes to fill a whole packet!

The growing page just says that the stems get soft if you give flax too much nitrogen: "Seed quality and shelf life also deteriorate with excessive fertilisation".

[watervole]

Ah well, one for those on poorer soils.

Plus, it looks like you need a field to get a decent quantity...

[igenlode]

Much like any other 'grain' plant, as opposed to fruits -- you need a lot of individual plants to get a significant volume of seeds.

But we've never had enough space under cultivation to even consider being self-sufficient in anything (bar chilli peppers -- and tomatoes, for a month or so per year), so my expectations are limited to having enough of any given vegetable annually for one or two 'special' meals, as opposed to trying to save any significant amount of money via grow-your-own. I just think it might be fun to have a pot of flax and get half a jamjar or so of seed out of it; at least you don't have to worry about harvesting it *before* it goes to seed, as you do with the herbs :-)

[watervole]

We're fortunate to have an allotment, and I'm very fortunate to have my husband to look after it, when I'm in too much pain to do anything.

I'm tempted to try a little bit of flax in the back garden just because the flowers are pretty. But we have a clay soil and I see it prefers sandy/stony.

Ah well.

[igenlode]

Well, it sowed itself quite happily for me in a flowerpot full of spent generic compost :-) But the flowers are very ephemeral, even more so than poppies.

Apparently the one thing it doesn't tolerate is waterlogged soil: https://www.epicgardening.com/flax-plant/

[watervole]

And heavy clay soil, (further down the page)

[igenlode]

Alas!

I think there is some confusion around: the consensus seems to be that flax *prefers* relatively barren and definitely well-drained soil, but that page for example says that it "enjoys fertile, loamy soil", whereas other pages say Sand, clay and rocky soil all contribute to the best growth of this plant -- the impression I get is that flax is at heart basically a wildflower and grows accordingly. Which is odd, given that linen and linseed and the flax crops that produced them were mainstays of civilization for millennia... but then I believe that even wheat up until very recently was still much closer to wild grasses than modern varieties are.

I was listening to an interesting programme on the radio yesterday, discussing UK food sufficiency, which said that until the 20th century and the introduction of motorised transport, *oats* were the major grain crop in this country, since they are best suited to the local growing conditions; after the demise of the working horse, barley (for beer?) took over, and wheat didn't come to dominate until the introduction of energy-intensive agriculture made it possible to get a saleable crop in areas that weren't previously able to return anything more than a straggly corn harvest. Wheat is apparently only naturally suited to a very limited range of fertile land in the UK -- which is why during WW2 there was a big push to substitute a proportion of homegrown oats into pastry, for example, to reduce the volume of pre-war wheat imports.

At any rate, I get the impression that the big problem with flax and clay is drainage -- so it's a matter of whether your soil is waterlogged or not rather than whether it contains a high percentage of clay or not. (But of course you can simply use a pot of home-made compost rather than plant in garden soil... though in that case you might need quite a bit of 'filler' to reduce the fertility levels! Sand/leafmould? They always used to be part of 'recipes' for home-made seed compost...)

[watervole]

That's interesting. There's an old song: 'Oats and beans and barley grow' - no mention of wheat.

I really like oats. I love oatcakes, both the 'biscuit' type and the kind you fry in a pan.

We're working on adding lots of compost and manure to the allotment. The soil is noticeably better than it was, but I think we've a few more years work yet. It waterlogs very badly in winter, the raspberries get root rot.

I'm not quite clear about what triggered the shift from oats to barley?

[igenlode]

Historically when people talk about 'corn' it's hard to know whether they meant wheat or barleycorn -- wheaten bread has certainly always been around, even if barley bread was peasant food. (The OED tells me that it was originally the Saxon 'hwaete'!)

Apparently another version of that rhyme is "Oats, peas, beans and barley grow", although I always knew it as 'oats and beans' -- I suspect it goes back before potatoes in any case. It sounds very mediaeval as a crop system.

I'm not quite clear about what triggered the shift from oats to barley?

Well, according to the chap on the radio, it was the loss of the market for horse-fodder -- oats and hay being the standard feed for any animals not 'out to grass', i.e. every animal in a town and a lot of those kept in peak working/riding condition elsewhere. I assume that the people who were previously raising oats for sale as fodder switched to raising barley as an alternative cash crop; by the end of the 19th century Britain was importing vast amounts of beef and wheat from North America, where the scale of the farms enabled them to undercut domestic production costs to such a degree that it was cheaper to pay to ship food across the Atlantic than it was to grow it locally. The British beef farmer had to cultivate and fence his pastures and move his herd from one small field to the next: the American rancher just let his steers fend for themselves, then drove them off to the nearest railhead and meatpacking plant.