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How to sow wild flower seeds on grass
Chris Mason
Posts: 159
in Plants
Please forgive my absolute ignorance but I just want to make sure what I'm doing will work, I have three questions and I'm going to ask them all here as a pose to pointless creating three spate threads when all three questions are quests similare and over the same thing.
1) I've spent about £20 on seeds (oxeye daises, wild red clovers and white dead nettle) What is the most effective way to sow these? I personally just want to throw the daises and red clovers in a pot, mix the, and and simply throw them on the grass (I'm creaking a wild garden) the white nettles will be a little more organized and will placed on the slightly shadier area of the garden where the grass is a little shorter. - will this work if I simply throw them straight on the grass and give them a little TLC? (spray lightly with water every day and don't walk on them) 2) is it too late to do sow the seeds? If possible I'd like them to germinate and start growing this year. 3) if they don't sprout this year and the seeds are not damaged, will they sprout next year? Thank you0
Posts
Great idea, this rarely works for more than one year as the grass out competes everything else (except maybe the dasies) you need something like yellow rattle which is a plant that will parisetise (?) The grass and weaken it just enough to let the flowers grow, plug plants are available online, ive struggled to grow yellow rattle from seed, so plants are probably better, once thats got a hold, you should be fine to carry on as you said in your first post
I find the thing with willdflowers is not to assume that by some miracle they should be treated any differently to any other flowers. One wouldn't plant annuals by mixing them up and throwing on grass and expect it to work?
With most wildlflowers grown from seed I would recommend treating them exactly like annuals, start them in trays, prick them out, grow them on and plant out as sturdy plants.
With clover, white nettles and daises though you will be able to sow direct. But not on grass! You will have to prepare the ground like any seed bed to have any luck with it all, else the existing grass will simply swamp the lot of them. If you want a grassy meadow effect, choose native grasses carefully and add them to the mix.
Else go Bekkies route and put in plug plants that will weaken the existing grass, but it would still all work much better in a properly prepared bed at the start.
The only problem is, I'm approaching my absolute budget with this project, I don't have the money to remove the grass and place down a native species.... I could possibly afford a raised flower bed or make a DIY one
Grow the seeds as mentioned in small pots or a few gravel trays. Pot on when large enough. When they are ready to put outside, cut blocks out of the turf, dig down a spade depth and turn the soil over and plant into that. Not great, but if you can't do the whole lawn, then it'll at least give the plants a bit of a start.
Apart from yellow rattle I haven't successfully started plants from seed into grass. I think they need to be bigger than plugs when they go in as well unless your soil is kinder than mine. A few things have successfully seeded themselves but for the enormous amount of seed set the increase in plants isn't huge. Malva moschata Daucus carota and Centaurea nigra have done best in spreading by seed.
In the sticks near Peterborough
Happy to send you some little daisy and dead nettle plants chris? Its still possible to do it without yellow rattle etc, i would probably do what jimmy said and turn the grass over, you will need to be really careful to weed out the grass by the flowers to they dont get smothered, its just a little more work
Why not post on the seed swap site for yellow rattle or even native grasses? You never know, you could be lucky
I should have mentioned the grass up there isn't healty, thick, green grass. The ground isn't that fertile and it's never really had much attention. It's been fenced off and left for a few years, I'd go up there and strim but every now and again, it's got a few tree surrounding it so it gets full sun for a few hours but its often part shade all day, the grass doesn't grow that fast, I'd probably strim it once a month if that.
I'm really appreciating the advice so far
Stuff does for up though
Chris - just by doing a bit of digging you might find wildflowers taking advantage. After digging over my borders in the autumn I've had lots of red dead-nettle come up
This so what I have decided todo, I will rotivate the ground, I'll put out native grass seeds sparingly (I'll let them go to seed so they sow themselves thus saving me money) and I'll do as suggested and I'll grow the flowers indoors and put out once established.