On 22 Aug, 22:57, kay wrote:
Ragnar;898166 Wrote:



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".

--
kay

Animals don't graze hay meadows. There would be no hay.