Starting a Wildflower Meadow (Updated)

[Music] firstly thank you for helping to put our native plants back into our landscape we're sure you'll love them secondly thank you for buying your seed through habitat aid we work with a top quality community of small British suppliers and conservation charities so you can feel doubly good about using us whether you're establishing a wildflower patch in your garden or making a meadow area with wildflowers and grasses there are several basic things you can do to improve your chances of success folk can have problems caused by saying the wrong seed or old seed for preparation of the site or a rather less a fair approach to management what is the wrong seed make sure you have the right mix for your soil type situation and requirement you might lapse Caviar's for example but if you've got clay soil you're not going to have any joy growing it most meadow flowers will do poorly in shade if you want grasses as well as wildflowers on your seed mix I hope you do they're lovely and excellent for biodiversity most mixes include 80% grasses and 20% wildflowers but you can get different proportions or just wild flowers if you like if you want color in the first year add some cornfield annuals to a perennial mix they'll look lovely and will help suppress any weeds you can also buy the wrong seed by buying it from the wrong supplier which means you might get non viable seed it might have come from outside the UK which takes you into issues with provenance and appropriateness quite apart from the non-native species which might creep in habitat aids seed all has a guaranteed UK provenance it's top quality and we test it regularly just to be sure [Music] so you've decided which seed to buy what you do next you'll need to sew it on bare earth with his little grass and weed in as possible you wouldn't so carrot seed by throwing us on your lawn and wildflowers and a different to this end you can employ three strategies the nuclear option [Music] strip off the topsoil stripping's the best solution is its environmentally sound err there's a more complete job and remove the fertile soil the poorer quality or growing medium the better as it will discourage grass nettles doc and thistle if you can rotavator how the site and pounce on any weeds which come up [Music] Plan B is less dramatic cut out squares of any existing turf replaced with a mix of 50/50 sand and topsoil and say your wild flowers into the squares unless you established yellow rattle which we'll talk about in a moment it's a doomed strategy though as the surrounding grasses will just take over [Music] the last options the fiddly ax stand takes longer but the least aesthetically unappealing in the short-term chain Harrow will rake your existing sward and cut it very short in the late autumn until you can see at least 50% earth then sew and tread in the rattle seed yellow rattle is an attractive semi parasitic meadow annual which attaches itself to grasses and reduces their vigor it has to be sown in autumn because it went germinate unless subjected to a prolonged cold bout the idea is that the rattle will knock back the grass and then the following autumn you can repeat the treatment but say your wildflower mix rather than the rattle it might not work it's a fickle plant although it's done the trick for us when we've tried it [Music] you can sew in spring or autumn whenever you're saying they're the perfect weather is when it's wet and warm if you're broadcasting by hand rather than machine it's difficult to see where you've been and how much to say so measure out say ten square meters worth of seed and mix it with an inert carrier likes and although we wrote evaded this site last autumn it doesn't look like it now so a quick rake over will tidy it up and give it a nice chill [Music] once you've seen the seed likely roll it or tread it in some seeds will germinate amazingly quickly so keep an eye on the seedlings and make sure they don't try out if you don't have any annuals in your mix keep it cut to around ten centimeters throughout the first summer after sowing to stop annual weeds developing and to keep the grasses suppressed to allow the wildflowers to develop managing the area is easy keep weeding out anything you don't want or anything aggressive that pops up thistles are problematic for example if you have them make sure the grasses don't overwhelm the wildflowers if necessary you can regulate them with rattle cut the meadow short in the late summer or early summer if you want to use the hay and keep it trimmed over the winter always remove the cuttings to reduce soil fertility and that's about it this is a very brief introduction to the topic do you have a look at the information on the website for further help if you're really stuck just give us a call and if we can't help one of our consultants we'll be able to [Music] you

Channel: HabitatAid

Views: 43,343

Keywords: wildflower, meadow, seeds

Id: rF9_B1gHVgs

Length: 5min 29sec (329 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 05 2017