@Gwenr Your drier climate gives you the advantage of having less long, lush grass I expect, but if you leave it all until autumn before cutting I don't really know how that would go. Maybe you could keep us updated about what you use to cut it and how easy you find it in case others are wondering too? It may be that 40 sq metres of flowery mead is well worth the work of cutting it later.
@Gwenr Your drier climate gives you the advantage of having less long, lush grass I expect, but if you leave it all until autumn before cutting I don't really know how that would go. Maybe you could keep us updated about what you use to cut it and how easy you find it in case others are wondering too? It may be that 40 sq metres of flowery mead is well worth the work of cutting it later.
You are right about the grass, this area ended up with the grass turning brown and our silly neighbours who kept mowing ended up with dust bowls, then they used a hose to water the grass. I'm going to see if we can find a scythe, or we might try to hire one, but I must keep the wildlife in mind. Many thanks for your help and advice.
As Marran said, a petrol driven Allen scythe will cut through even the tough plants like Knapweed or St John's Wort. It takes it down to 2 or 3 inches, then i go over again with regular mower, having first raked with a spring rake to lift all the fallen grass and creeping grass that escaped the Allen scythe. As has been ponted out, a wildflower lawn/meadow is far from an easy option. It take s me the best part of a month in Sep/Oct and mine is a largish lawn, by no means a meadow.
Indeed you're right about the amount of work required to maintain a meadow, @lesleymeyrick... I finally finished cutting my not-huge meadow area (c.150 square metres) with hand shears yesterday. Unusually for western Ireland, we had a completely dry fortnight, and amazingly, I managed to shove all the cut material into the three dumpy sacks I had vacant.
Next year I won't leave it until the grass collapses...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Indeed you're right about the amount of work required to maintain a meadow, @lesleymeyrick... I finally finished cutting my not-huge meadow area (c.150 square metres) with hand shears yesterday. Unusually for western Ireland, we had a completely dry fortnight, and amazingly, I managed to shove all the cut material into the three dumpy sacks I had vacant.
Next year I won't leave it until the grass collapses...
Ours is only going to be 40 square metres, but we've decided to do a mini one at the back of the pond, bungalow end and another round the sides and back of the wildlife pond end of the garden, the ferns did worse this year than last as we had no rain for several weeks just high temperatures and sun, so we lifted them, very sad, but no choice really, the little meadow will replace them.
@Gwenr we are up in Yorkshire and have approximately 200mt2 of meadow. It gets cut in mid to late September once all the flowering is over and hopefully the seeds have dropped. I hire a large brush cutter mower to cut it as even my large and powerful petrol mower can't deal with the amount of material. This has worked for the last 4 years, this year we also hired a large heavy duty scarifier and really beat up the area leaving almost bare ground. This will hopefully help to weaken the grass and let more wildflowers germinate.
@Gwenr we are up in Yorkshire and have approximately 200mt2 of meadow. It gets cut in mid to late September once all the flowering is over and hopefully the seeds have dropped. I hire a large brush cutter mower to cut it as even my large and powerful petrol mower can't deal with the amount of material. This has worked for the last 4 years, this year we also hired a large heavy duty scarifier and really beat up the area leaving almost bare ground. This will hopefully help to weaken the grass and let more wildflowers germinate.
Thank you Wilderbeast, we have such a small patch, 40 square metres, I don't think we will need all that equipment.
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Many thanks for your help and advice.
Next year I won't leave it until the grass collapses...