Rubber, I can't see a mention of the poorer soil most wild flowers enjoy.
Does your front garden have a fairly rich soil?
If it does you need to deplete it. Nearly all the wildflower species need surprising poor soil to do well.
I sow my wild flowers on some very poor soil, which builders left after the conversion.and they do very well. nothing else really grows there apart from buddlia another poor soil lover. Its great for the herbs as well
Well I think I made a big mistake with my planned wild flower meadow as the grass has grown too well!
Picture if you can the front of my barn with an established lime tree in the centre of a fairly large area which had been rough grass until I set about my master plan. For the first year I chopped down thistles, nettles, docks and other unwanted plants. Then I weed killed endlessly. This was followed by hand picking out loads of bricks and stones. By then I had no energy left to dig over the plot so I hired a man with a large rotavator. Then there was more rubble picking to do.
Next came my fatal error I (and some helpful relatives) raked and seeded the lot. It was meant to be a slow growing grass. By last spring the grass had grown well and I contemplated my next move. Using the tree as a centre point I got my other half to mow paths radiating out from the tree like the rays of the sun! Then as my attempts at growing wild flowers from seed had failed I spent last summer digging holes in the unmown strips of grass and planting established wild flower and perennials. This proved to be both hard work and costly as there is quite a large eexpanse to plant up. At the end of the summer I strimmed the whole lot down carefully avoiding all my flowers and raked up all the grass!
My problem now as you can imagine is too much grass which threatens to overwhelm the flowers. My vision of wandering along the mown paths enjoying my ?? wild flower meadow is a distant fancy.
My husband says I should buy a sit on mower and mow the lot down. My son in law says he will lend me some electric fencing and a few sheep to solve the problem. I am so disappointed!!!!!!!
Rubber, what you need is a good big packet of Yellow Rattle. I usually sow it in autumn but it would be worth trying now, we're bound to get some cold weather before spring. It's semi-parasitic on grass and really cuts the grass back.
What have you planted in the grass? I cut my meadow completely at the end of summer, I don't strim round the flowers.
I doesn't come quickly, mine can still look an unimpressive mess on a bad year.
How would you go about planting the seed as the grass is very thick? I planted all sorts of perenials in groups of three and a few wild flowers. But to be quite honest I might habe groups of two by next summer as some died before they got going. There were meadow buttercup, bladder campion, yarrow, field scabious, meadow clary, ladys bedstraw, black knapweed, greater knapweed, wild carrot, meadow cranesbill, hyssop, st johns wort and fox and cubs for the wild flowers. Then coreopsis, centaurea, lythrum robin, leucanthemum, oenothera, inula, sedum, phlox, monarda, polemonium, heliopsis, aster, galiardia, solidago, liatris, salvia, verbena bonar..., campanula, aconitum, lobelia, echinacea, linaria, cleome, catanache and echinacea purpurea. So as you can see I invested quite a lot of money and a great deal of tme and effort digging up the grass to plant them. If they were all to grow there is still room to plant the sme amount again without it looking crowded. So what next???
Mow it all rubber, and remove the mowings. Some things will do well, there are some there that won't but that's always the case. Give it a bit of a rake here and there so you can see soil and sow not too thickly. Don't mow it again til the plant has set seed. After that it looks after itself. You have some plants there that will never grow in grass, I'd leave them to live or die as they see fit. Meadows are a complex entities. Not all the same. You can mow up til hay time them leave it for late flowerers, that won't work where you've sown the YR. Or you can leave it through spring and early summer and mow late summer, that works with spring bulbs, early flowerers and rattle.
It takes a long time to get a balance and see what works with your soil and your plants.
Posts
Rubber, I can't see a mention of the poorer soil most wild flowers enjoy.
Does your front garden have a fairly rich soil?
If it does you need to deplete it. Nearly all the wildflower species need surprising poor soil to do well.
I sow my wild flowers on some very poor soil, which builders left after the conversion.and they do very well. nothing else really grows there apart from buddlia another poor soil lover. Its great for the herbs as well
Good drainage and poor soil are my recipes.
The poor soil thing is about flowers growing in grass meadows. If the soil is rich the grass goes mad and swamps the flowers.
The flowers themselves will grow in whatever they get, (taking acid/alkali. wet/dry etc requirements into account)
In the sticks near Peterborough
Well I think I made a big mistake with my planned wild flower meadow as the grass has grown too well!
Picture if you can the front of my barn with an established lime tree in the centre of a fairly large area which had been rough grass until I set about my master plan. For the first year I chopped down thistles, nettles, docks and other unwanted plants. Then I weed killed endlessly. This was followed by hand picking out loads of bricks and stones. By then I had no energy left to dig over the plot so I hired a man with a large rotavator. Then there was more rubble picking to do.
Next came my fatal error I (and some helpful relatives) raked and seeded the lot. It was meant to be a slow growing grass. By last spring the grass had grown well and I contemplated my next move. Using the tree as a centre point I got my other half to mow paths radiating out from the tree like the rays of the sun! Then as my attempts at growing wild flowers from seed had failed I spent last summer digging holes in the unmown strips of grass and planting established wild flower and perennials. This proved to be both hard work and costly as there is quite a large eexpanse to plant up. At the end of the summer I strimmed the whole lot down carefully avoiding all my flowers and raked up all the grass!
My problem now as you can imagine is too much grass which threatens to overwhelm the flowers. My vision of wandering along the mown paths enjoying my ?? wild flower meadow is a distant fancy.
My husband says I should buy a sit on mower and mow the lot down. My son in law says he will lend me some electric fencing and a few sheep to solve the problem. I am so disappointed!!!!!!!
Rubber, what you need is a good big packet of Yellow Rattle. I usually sow it in autumn but it would be worth trying now, we're bound to get some cold weather before spring. It's semi-parasitic on grass and really cuts the grass back.
What have you planted in the grass? I cut my meadow completely at the end of summer, I don't strim round the flowers.
I doesn't come quickly, mine can still look an unimpressive mess on a bad year.
I like the radiating paths idea
In the sticks near Peterborough
How would you go about planting the seed as the grass is very thick? I planted all sorts of perenials in groups of three and a few wild flowers. But to be quite honest I might habe groups of two by next summer as some died before they got going. There were meadow buttercup, bladder campion, yarrow, field scabious, meadow clary, ladys bedstraw, black knapweed, greater knapweed, wild carrot, meadow cranesbill, hyssop, st johns wort and fox and cubs for the wild flowers. Then coreopsis, centaurea, lythrum robin, leucanthemum, oenothera, inula, sedum, phlox, monarda, polemonium, heliopsis, aster, galiardia, solidago, liatris, salvia, verbena bonar..., campanula, aconitum, lobelia, echinacea, linaria, cleome, catanache and echinacea purpurea. So as you can see I invested quite a lot of money and a great deal of tme and effort digging up the grass to plant them. If they were all to grow there is still room to plant the sme amount again without it looking crowded. So what next???
Mow it all rubber, and remove the mowings. Some things will do well, there are some there that won't but that's always the case. Give it a bit of a rake here and there so you can see soil and sow not too thickly. Don't mow it again til the plant has set seed. After that it looks after itself. You have some plants there that will never grow in grass, I'd leave them to live or die as they see fit. Meadows are a complex entities. Not all the same. You can mow up til hay time them leave it for late flowerers, that won't work where you've sown the YR. Or you can leave it through spring and early summer and mow late summer, that works with spring bulbs, early flowerers and rattle.
It takes a long time to get a balance and see what works with your soil and your plants.
In the sticks near Peterborough
Will try as you suggest but doubt whether I will be able to see any soil to sow into.