FLAX.
Change the seed every season. This will greatly increase the quantity, and improve the quality. In nothing else is it more important. In Ireland, the great flax-growing country of the world, they always sow foreign seed when it can be procured. American seed is preferred, and brings the highest price. Experiments with different seeds, on varieties of soils, are much needed. Changing from all the soils and latitudes of our country would be useful. The general rule, however, as with all seeds, is to change from colder to warmer regions.
Soils.—The best are strong alluvial soils. Any soil good for a garden is good for flax. As much clay as will allow soil soon to become dry and easily to be made mellow, is desirable; black loam, with hard, poor clay-subsoil, is also good. Mellow, friable soils are not more important to any other crop than to flax. Land must not be worked when too wet. The land should be rich from a previous year's manuring. Salt, lime, ashes, and plaster, are good applications to flax after it has come up. On light soil with bad tillage, when the flax was so poor that the cultivator was about to plow it up, the application of three bushels of plaster, in the morning when the dew was on, produced a larger yield of better flax from an acre than adjoining growers got from two acres of their best land.