Jamie’s Little Allotment: Gayton based gardener discusses benefits of growing wildflowers
In his weekly column, Gayton-based gardener Jamie Marsh discuesses the benefits of growing wildflowers…
I just love this time of the year when you see all the poppies in the fields as you're driving down the country roads.
Swaiths of beautiful tissue-like red flowers infilled with thousands of lovely Oxeye daisies, cornflowers, and corn cockles among so many other native wildflowers.
Seeing this regularly just made me want a wildflower meadow.
Now, the meadow sounds a bit grand, to be honest, I was thinking more like a patch rather than a meadow.
At the end of our front lawn, would be perfect, so we can enjoy it every time we drive past it.
I already knew a little bit about growing wildflowers but I wanted to get it right, so I had a bit of a delve on the internet, to give myself the best chance of success.
The reoccurring tip to starting a wildflower patch was, don’t let the grass take over, if you do it will choke any flowers out.
Now I’ve decided where I want my wildflowers, and I’ve had a read-up about it, it’s time to get going.
This was back on a damp cold day in December 2022, mowing the patch of grass to near death, then scarifying and raking it hard then re-mowing, all to try and get as much grass and weeds out.
I’m now at the point of no return, as I’m left with a bare, muddy, unattractive patch, where once was quite a nice lawn.
It’s now seed sowing time, I had bought a wildflower meadow mix of seed from a local manufacturer.
Give it a good mix-up and broadcast it over the area as uniformly as possible, if at all possible while my hands are like ice and it’s blowing a gale.
After giving it a good rake it was time to wait.
Spring came and I noticed a few plants popping up in and amongst the very strong grass growth.
Nothing came of the meadow that year, but I wasn’t going to be downhearted, I was going to try again, but this time I was going to hit it hard.
Knowing it was probably the vigorous grass and weeds growing through which stifled the flowers, I knew I had to somehow kill them, in many books, they mention weed killers to control the grass and weeds but as I don’t use any chemicals I needed another solution.
If you’ve read any of my articles or follow me on Instagram, you might have heard me talk about “the no dig method” of gardening.
Basically cardboard is put down on the ground where you want you’re new growing space, which will hopefully block out all the sunlight and kill whatever is underneath.
So after mowing and scarifying it to death again, I added a layer of cardboard and then topped the cardboard with soil.
This was the second factor I’d read about while researching, wildflowers like poor soil, you don’t hear that said much in the gardening community.
It usually uses good quality soil or compost with lots of nutrients, but not this time.
The worst, nutrient-deficient soil you can get your hands on will do great, I had 2 raised beds in my old allotment area which I was removing because the new chicken coop was being sited there, and the soil in there was awful, so it would do fine.
Moving wet soil is another matter, I’ve been used to wheelbarrowing lovely light fluffy peat-free compost which is so light and airy. Not like this old, claggy, heavy soil.
Finally after a couple of weeks of a few heavy wheelbarrows a day of the soil, the cardboard area was covered and again time for seed sowing.
A repeat of the previous year’s ritual took place, and then the wait began.
As the winter turned to spring and things started to come to life in other parts of the garden, I was watching the patch of earth with much anticipation, but nothing was happening.
Maybe I just wasn’t meant to have any wildflowers. What had grown all around the patch was cow parsley, which was amazing because I love seeing the tall white flowers but it isn’t my meadow.
Until one day I started to see some plants growing in and among the few weeds that had blown in.
I had a closer look and realised they were daisies, after daisies came corn flowers then poppies.
I think the wildflowers were actually happening. And they did, as the warmer weather came so did my little wildflower
patch. And wow, now at the end of June, it looks stunning.
And the bees absolutely love it.
I’ll be back in the allotment next week. So if you have any questions please email me at Jamieslittleallotment@gmail.com
