Fast forward to July...

Life got awfully complicated this summer, with my parents having some significant health problems that required everybody to drop everything and help out. Neither the garden nor the blog has been well attended-to, but we're starting to develop some sort of equilibrium now, so there will be pictures on here again soon!

State of the garden: Most of my plantings have perished in the weeds/rabbits/woodchucks/deer/neglect. What has made it? The sweet corn, the tomatoes, the broomcorn, the popcorn, the pumpkins, the long island cheese squash, either the potimarron or the sunshine squash (I'm not sure at the moment - I'll tell you in a few months!), the hops, and the flax. In fact, the flax is thriving, and will be ready to harvest in a few short weeks.

In preparation for the flax harvest, we've built a flax break - I'll post pictures soon. Actually, I'll post pics of a lot of things.

Planting

The hops are up! All 6 have leaves poking out of the ground, which is about the most exciting thing ever. Now it's a race for the sky!

The garden's all planted, as of this weekend. I thought for a little bit about taking pictures, but at this stage it's just a large rectangle of dirt - not much to see there. The planting took two Saturdays, and ended up being more of a "put everything in the ground" than a well-planned planting session. Next year, there will be a plan of attack. And twine.

So, today we planted:
"Titan" sunflowers
"Elegance" mixed greens
"Jade" mache
"Spargo" spinach
"Deertongue" lettuce
"Focea" lettuce
"Bright Lights" swiss chard
"Red Ace" beets
"Nabechan" bunching onions
"Vermont Cranberry" beans
"Kenearly Yellow Eye" beans
"Lemon" cucumbers
"Genuine" cucumbers
"Caveman's Club" gourds (These have really neat-looking seeds! They're still obvious cucurbit seeds, but all angular and weird - I'd never seen them before.)
"Spaghetti Squash" squash
"Potimarron" squash
"Honey Orange" melon
"Long Island Cheese" pumpkins/squash
"Sunshine" squash
"Tom Fox" pumpkins
"Diablo" brussel sprouts (replaced some that were eaten)

Last week (5/7) we planted:
"Hermes" flax
"Miniature Colored Popcorn" corn
"Red broomcorn" broomcorn
"Cream of Saskatchewan" watermelon
zucchini (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's, and they've ALREADY been eaten)
"Vision" sweet corn
brussel sprouts (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's)
"Walla Walla" onions
tomatoes (a mix of transplants - "Black from Tula", which I grew, and which have been eaten; one "Early Girl" from Lowe's, which has suffered heavily from frost; and two "Black Krim" from Lowe's that are faring better.)

I may yet replant some Black from Tula - perhaps next week? I know there's an ice cube's chance they'll make it by frost, but somewhere in my heart I'm still hoping for a "Black from Tula" this year. I've also got some really late-season crops and some "replant every 2 weeks" crops waiting in the wings (parsnips, more beets)... but at this point, it's really: cross my fingers, pray for just-enough rain, and hope for the best. Next Saturday maybe it will be photo-ready.

Happy Birthday to Me!!

This week was my birthday (Wednesday)....  Guess what I got in the mail?

Flax seed!

I'm absolutely ecstatic. Joybilee Farm came through beautifully on this, and we spent a giddy while exclaiming over the very Canadian-ness of the package - seriously, that's how excited I am - and then I got right to work researching designs for a flax break. Ye olde an' symple tules are more varied and complex than they first appear.

It's 500g of seed, enough to sow 200sqft thickly for fiber production. I have absolutely no idea what this translates into in terms of weight (or yardage) of linen yarn produced, but I will find out!

...

(If, like me, you're mildly obsessed with this, I did find here that a "1.5m by 5 m patch of flax produces about 350 grams of flax fibre." 1.5mx5m works out roughly to 80sqft, so my 200sqft patch might yield something like 875g of finished fiber, which would be about 2362yds in something like the preparation Euroflax Sport Weight uses, or an astonishing 5075yds in something similar to 14/2 Euroflax Lace. Of course, that's assuming it's the size of the plot that determines production, not the amount of seed that goes into it; and ignoring known variables like spinning technique, growing conditions, seed varieties, harvest timing, etc.)