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Old 22-08-2010, 10:57 PM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar View Post

If you missed Countryfile on BBC this afternoon try and find a repeat
because there was a good item about wild flower meadows.

I am quite sure you would need to scalp the ground and sow wild flower seed.
If you just leave it (mowing occasionally) it would revert to wild flower
meadow eventually but it could take many years.
HTH
R.
Scalping the ground is a way of removing the top layer of fertile soil and providing low fertility conditions where the grass is less able to out-compete the other plants. If the soil is already unfertile enough, there is no need. Equally, there's no need to sow wild flower seed if there's enough of a seed bank in the soil - which there may well be if gorse is growing.

Wild meadows aren't in fact wild - they are the result of grazing and mowing which keeps down competition from scrub.

Meadows are grown for hay - animals graze the first spring crops of grass, then the grass is left to grow all summer, mown, and the mowings taken away. You can imitate this pattern with a lawn mower. Mowing will keep down the gorse, and the flowers you would be looking at are summer flowering ones which seed by August so they have dropped their seed by the time you do the autumn mowing. Quite which ones depends on your soil type.

If you want spring flowers instead, then run it as pasture - allow "grazing" from end May onwards.

You can further reduce fertility by sowing yellow rattle seeds - yellow rattle is parasitic on grass.

I'd be inclined to keep the rabbit proof fencing - that way *you* can decide when you want to "graze".
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