There is no plus to spraying the field margins. That's what our local farmer does. All his fields have a wide orange brown strip round them. Nothing lives and it looks awful.
Farmers have enough to deal with complying with DEFRA's strange rules and regs. so they can probably do without us grizzling about how they run their farms. I for one feel lucky that my view includes a field of crops (beans this year) rather than a load of other houses.
Could be that the margins - close to arable land with fertliser applications and all the rest - don't harbour the sort of lovely wildlflowers which you might imagine. 7-8 ft tall 'weeds' on the edge of my garden would certainly bother me. Dyer's End's solution (strimming/whacking the weeds to prevent seeding) might be worth looking at. You might actually improve the diversity of what is growing in the margins, by controlling the outrageously rampant stuff...
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
Could be that the margins - close to arable land with fertliser applications and all the rest - don't harbour the sort of lovely wildlflowers which you might imagine. 7-8 ft tall 'weeds' on the edge of my garden would certainly bother me. Dyer's End's solution (strimming/whacking the weeds to prevent seeding) might be worth looking at. You might actually improve the diversity of what is growing in the margins, by controlling the outrageously rampant stuff...
They may not be 'lovely wildflowers' but if they're native plants they'll be of use to somebody - have you ever seen a flock of goldfinches on a field-margin full of seeding thistles? Wonderful!
And surely you're not advocating going onto someone else's land and 'controlling' anything without permission?
DyersEnd, the perfume from a crop of flowering field beans is magical - and think of all those lovely pollinators it'll attract
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I already am Dove, they'll be most welcome in my garden and maybe some of my pollinators will return the favour for the beans Also can't wait for the perfume assault - had wheat the last 2 years, no problem but no perfume and an awful lot of thrips/thunderbugs.
I wouldn't mind so much if something was done with the fields but they were bought by my neighbour about 5 years ago and he has done nothing with them. There is a type of grass which grows down here which has small bulbils at the base, the stems of the grass are very tough and looks similar to a bamboo. It kills anything it grows near and spreads very quickly, dehydrating the soil and choking other plants with its large fibrous root system and the mat of bulbils on the surface of the ground.
The brambles are rooted in the fields and climb over the banks into my fertile garden soil, rooting themselves on the way and strangling anything in their path. The wild willow is now an almost impenetrable forest in the fields. The tree surgeon who comes to cut my hawthorn hedge each year now has to cut a path for himself to reach my boundary before he can begin work, which I have to pay for timewise.
I keep the hedge cut to give a nesting area for the birds, feed the birds regularly and delight in the wild life which abounds around me but I would like to be able to have a small space of my own to grow fruit, veg and flowers which did not involve a constant war on invasive weeds etc.
I hate spraying, guess I will just have to move back to suburbia.
instead of fighting it why not try adding to it, with a couple of bags of wild flower seeds that you like, most tend to like poor dessiccated soil. if the farmers are doing the right thing of leaving good margins a bit more diversity shouldn't be a problem?
//And surely you're not advocating going onto someone else's land and 'controlling' anything without permission?//
Dyer's End implied that he had permission. Obviously you don't go strimming on someone else's land, I didn't even think that needed clarifying.
Yeah, bullfinches, lovely, but clouds of fluffy seeds from things like thistles, ragwort and willowherb covering my garden? I'd be annoyed, yes. Even if every field margin directly abutting a garden was kept strimmed whenever it got to waist high, that would only be a tiny percentage of them. And we're only talking about one garden. I think we do have a right to enjoy our gardens and not be completely beholden to the needs of wildlife. Gardens do provide pretty good biodiversity in themselves....
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
I work on the basis which was here first, my house or the field, I knew what i was buying so i work with what i have, big weeds are really satisfying to pull out! Perhaps a bit weird but when I was small if I was a very good girl my mum would let me weed, so I still enjoy it
Posts
There is no plus to spraying the field margins. That's what our local farmer does. All his fields have a wide orange brown strip round them. Nothing lives and it looks awful.
In the sticks near Peterborough
Amen!
Farmers have enough to deal with complying with DEFRA's strange rules and regs. so they can probably do without us grizzling about how they run their farms. I for one feel lucky that my view includes a field of crops (beans this year) rather than a load of other houses.
Could be that the margins - close to arable land with fertliser applications and all the rest - don't harbour the sort of lovely wildlflowers which you might imagine. 7-8 ft tall 'weeds' on the edge of my garden would certainly bother me. Dyer's End's solution (strimming/whacking the weeds to prevent seeding) might be worth looking at. You might actually improve the diversity of what is growing in the margins, by controlling the outrageously rampant stuff...
They may not be 'lovely wildflowers' but if they're native plants they'll be of use to somebody - have you ever seen a flock of goldfinches on a field-margin full of seeding thistles? Wonderful!
And surely you're not advocating going onto someone else's land and 'controlling' anything without permission?
DyersEnd, the perfume from a crop of flowering field beans is magical - and think of all those lovely pollinators it'll attract
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I already am Dove, they'll be most welcome in my garden and maybe some of my pollinators will return the favour for the beans
Also can't wait for the perfume assault - had wheat the last 2 years, no problem but no perfume and an awful lot of thrips/thunderbugs.
I wouldn't mind so much if something was done with the fields but they were bought by my neighbour about 5 years ago and he has done nothing with them. There is a type of grass which grows down here which has small bulbils at the base, the stems of the grass are very tough and looks similar to a bamboo. It kills anything it grows near and spreads very quickly, dehydrating the soil and choking other plants with its large fibrous root system and the mat of bulbils on the surface of the ground.
The brambles are rooted in the fields and climb over the banks into my fertile garden soil, rooting themselves on the way and strangling anything in their path. The wild willow is now an almost impenetrable forest in the fields. The tree surgeon who comes to cut my hawthorn hedge each year now has to cut a path for himself to reach my boundary before he can begin work, which I have to pay for timewise.
I keep the hedge cut to give a nesting area for the birds, feed the birds regularly and delight in the wild life which abounds around me but I would like to be able to have a small space of my own to grow fruit, veg and flowers which did not involve a constant war on invasive weeds etc.
I hate spraying, guess I will just have to move back to suburbia.
instead of fighting it why not try adding to it, with a couple of bags of wild flower seeds that you like, most tend to like poor dessiccated soil. if the farmers are doing the right thing of leaving good margins a bit more diversity shouldn't be a problem?
//And surely you're not advocating going onto someone else's land and 'controlling' anything without permission?//
Dyer's End implied that he had permission. Obviously you don't go strimming on someone else's land, I didn't even think that needed clarifying.
Yeah, bullfinches, lovely, but clouds of fluffy seeds from things like thistles, ragwort and willowherb covering my garden? I'd be annoyed, yes. Even if every field margin directly abutting a garden was kept strimmed whenever it got to waist high, that would only be a tiny percentage of them. And we're only talking about one garden. I think we do have a right to enjoy our gardens and not be completely beholden to the needs of wildlife. Gardens do provide pretty good biodiversity in themselves....
I work on the basis which was here first, my house or the field, I knew what i was buying so i work with what i have, big weeds are really satisfying to pull out! Perhaps a bit weird but when I was small if I was a very good girl my mum would let me weed, so I still enjoy it