Flowering Flax - Garden Basics - Flower - Annual
(Linum grandiflorum)
This
attractive, easily grown annual from North Africa is happy in
most any soil. Colorful, two inch flowers bloom atop 18-inch stems.
Most varieties bear red blossoms, but some have bluish purple,
pink or white flowers with a satiny appearance. The leaves are
narrow and grasslike. Common flax, from which linen and linseed
oil are made, is rarely used as a garden flower, but it makes
an attractive annual, growing 2 to 3 feet tall and bearing sky-blue,
or occasionally white, flowers.
Flax is very difficult to transplant, so it's best to sow the
seeds outdoors where you want them to grow any time in the fall,
or as early in spring as you can prepare the soil. Space the
seeds so that the plants will stand 8 to 10 inches apart. Sow
more seeds at intervals of three to four weeks to have successive
crops of flowers. This is necessary because each plant blossoms
only three to four weeks. Flowering flax needs full sun and
well drained soil. Expect flowers about 100 days after sowing
seeds.
Flax makes a colorful border plant, and blooms most profusely
where summers are cool.
- Type
annual -
Propagation
seeds -
Light
full sun -
Flower Color
red, bluish purple, pink or white -
Bloom Time
summer -
Height
18-24 inches -
Width
8 inches -
Soil Requirements
well drained -
Zones
all -
Uses
border, cutflowers
