Converting roughly 6,000 sqft from lawn to meadow:
8.5M seeds, 68 species (3 rushes, 7 grasses, 58 forbs) in the Northeast 6B. Made custom seed mixes across 4 different height categories: 3-4 color groupings per height category.
Area on the left with dark soil will be partial shade and the long central area is full sun.
Tried a mix of site prep options: solarizing, sheet mulching, grass herbicide + scalp cut, sod removal and top soil backfill. Curious which one will produce the best results.
Just hand sowed with playground sand ahead of a 1-3in snow storm overnight. Going to sow a couple dozen forbs separately in used berry containers and make plugs.
Feels like so much can and probably will go wrong. Did I kill enough grass? Will the rabbits, deer, voles and company eat it all?
Anyway here goes nothing. Gonna be hard waiting 3 years to see the hard work pay off.
Big thanks to this community for all your help and guidance lurking for the last year.
by mclaughliam
1 Comment
I’m doing something similar in my backyard but not nearly as large of an area. That piece doesn’t get much sun, especially when the trees are fully leafed out, and there are quite a few rocks so mowing it isn’t easy. My husband’s efforts to grow grass or even anything have been futile. So, we basically let the grass die and I scattered some native wildflower seeds (woodland sedge, aster, mistflower, and virginia bluebells) from Prairie Moon out there late this afternoon. Now it’s snowing. Perfect timing!