Wild flowers

Posts

• GardenerSuze Posts: 5,692

  July 2022

  I think the first could be Phacelia. Second a cardamine?

  I have worked as a Gardener for 24 years. My latest garden is a new build garden on heavy clay.

  1
• Ladybird4 Posts: 37,906

  July 2022

  Phacelia is grown as a green manure and the farmer will plough it back into the soil to enrich it. This can be done on a smaller scale in ordinary gardens. Another plus point for phacelia is that bees absolutely love it.
  

  Cacoethes: An irresistible urge to do something inadvisable
  

  2
• Silver surfer Posts: 4,719

  July 2022 edited July 2022

  1. Phacelia...see pics below.
  2 Something in the cabbage/brassica family...near me they are growing fields of radish...(Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus)
  Not for human food...maybe green manure or  for local biodigester.

  Perthshire. SCOTLAND .

  2
• LynfromSea Posts: 133

  July 2022

  Ladybird4 said:

  Phacelia is grown as a green manure and the farmer will plough it back into the soil to enrich it. This can be done on a smaller scale in ordinary gardens. Another plus point for phacelia is that bees absolutely love it.
  

  Thank you so much for your suggestion. I’m sure that’s what it is. 

  0
• LynfromSea Posts: 133

  July 2022

  Phacelia it is then! Thank you all so much for detecting it. This forum has a wealth of knowledge which you are so willing to share. I think I will grow some in my garden as it so pretty and as you say, so good for the bees 

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• punkdoc Posts: 15,039

  July 2022

  I have a little patch in a border, it self seeds every year and I edit as necessary. Adored by the bees and loved by me, although it doesn't die well.

  How can you lie there and think of England
  When you don't even know who's in the team
  
  S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border

  1
• Dovefromabove Posts: 88,147

  July 2022 edited July 2022

  Phacelia is usually grown nowadays, in this area at least, to provide nectar for pollinators.  If it’s grown as a green manure it’s usually ploughed in before it flowers. 

  
  

  The second pic looks like a field of Winter Wild Bird Seed Mix.  I can see several types of plants there including Fodder radish. 

  
  

  Farmers are encouraged to grow Fodder radish and many other plants to provide seeds for birds in the winter … see here
  
  https://www.gov.uk/countryside-stewardship-grants/winter-bird-food-ab9  
  

  
  

  Also check out this place on Fbook
  https://www.highashfarm.com/
  

  
  

  
  Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Dovefromabove Posts: 88,147

  July 2022

  Farmers buy the seeds in these types of various mixes depending on the scheme they’re taking part in 
  https://www.farmseeds.co.uk/products/environmental/stewardship-mixtures/wild-bird-seed-mixtures/
  

  
  Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• LynfromSea Posts: 133

  July 2022

  Dovefromabove said:

  Phacelia is usually grown nowadays, in this area at least, to provide nectar for pollinators.  If it’s grown as a green manure it’s usually ploughed in before it flowers. 

  
  

  The second pic looks like a field of Winter Wild Bird Seed Mix.  I can see several types of plants there including Fodder radish. 

  
  

  Farmers are encouraged to grow Fodder radish and many other plants to provide seeds for birds in the winter … see here
  
  https://www.gov.uk/countryside-stewardship-grants/winter-bird-food-ab9  
  

  
  

  Also check out this place on Fbook
  https://www.highashfarm.com/
  

  
  

  I like the idea that it is grown for bird seed but I was wondering whether the farmers were now growing their own fertiliser as their supply, I believe, has been cut due to the war in Ukraine.

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