Thursday, July 11, 2013

Retting my flax

Retting my dried flax in my 'green bin'....

My flax is dry, I think. It seems dry like hay, rather than dry like straw. The leaves had all fallen off and were crsipy, the stems had shrunk in volume quite a lot, and were dry but still a little bendy (ie they didn't snap when I bent them). I have no idea if this is dry enough or not, but I guess I'll find out!

I tried filling a clean plastic tote with water and weighting the flax down. The tote was about 30cm too short for the flax, but the largest thing I could find. It leaked from a crack in the base that I can't seem to find. So I've filled my green bin with water and am going to try retting in that.

As you can see from the photo, the flax is too tall for that too, sticking out by about 20 cm. I've bent the flower/seed tops part over and am hoping that will work!

I've had to put the bin in a part of the garden where I can bale out the water and use it for irrigation after the process is complete. Sadly that means it's in a shady part of the garden, and I suspect that will slow the retting.

Appologies for typos in this post. Blogspot is having one of its regular hissy fits and won't let me make corrections or take the cursor back into already written text. I'm hoping it'll let me publish without losing everything as it so frequently does (won't let you save either....). If you're ever considering a blog, use Wordpress, not Blogspot is my advice!

Penny

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