Whens the best time to harvest flax seed pods from my garden to dry out the seeds?

Question

How should I dry them, and would the seeds be edible?

Answer 1

great question -don't know

Answer 2

ready to harvest when seed is easily threshed out; yellow stalks and brown bolls.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/...

there might be a finer criteria known to health food nuts.

maybe spread the stalks on a screen if they need to dry further post-harvest. The above text talks about what size screen to use if u need to sieve clean ur seed from debris.

they need to be pretty darn dry before storage or they have problems. the text was talking about it.

quote from flax seed cracker manufacturer:

"They start by soaking the highest quality organic golden flaxseed in water; this starts the seeds germination process and also helps break down the hard outer shell so the flaxseeds can be easily chewed. Then they gently dehydrate their crackers at a very low temperature to preserve the living enzymes and vital nutrition."

http://aldebaran.tekinteractive.net/~foo...

i got both of those pages from here and there was a lot more:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=harvest...

this page is more recipe and forum/talk oriented:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=harvest...

Answer 3

wait until the flower itself looks withered and sort of ugly and old then pop the head off and claim the seeds :o) let em dry and bam you got yourself some nice looking seeds for next planting season! lol also i sell these seeds at very good prices at my website if you would like to check it out... www.seedneeds.com