This winter I planted a 36 tree orchard. The land currently has a mix of rushes, grasses and some pretty thick patches of nettles. I had hoped to put down some wildflowers under the trees. The area is about 20m x 30m.
I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on getting the ground ready wildflower seed. I didn't realise the nettles were as bad as they are. If I strim the area every couple of weeks this year would it weaken the weeds enough to kill them off and rotovate and sow seed next spring?
I was looking at ground cover options to kill off the vegetation, but at 600m2 it gets very expensive very quickly. I could maybe afford some cheap weed membrane to cover for the year but I'd be worried about getting it back up again. Cardboard would be difficult to get in a large nought quantity and to keep in place in a windy area. I'd prefer not to use weedkiller as I am growing food in the soil.
Any advice is welcome, thanks for reading
by FrostyM89
6 Comments
It’s going to be hard with all that grass. It will take over.
The most energy efficient and cost efficient solution would be to keep the grass cut and plant wild flower seeds in the soil around every fruit tree. They should self seed and spread but it won’t be a quick process.
So I’d at least recommend getting enough cardboard for around your trees to stop them being overgrown and then cover with wood chip. I’ve a very similar field and planted 2 apple trees(fair play on going all out with 36!) and they’ve been doing great with the cover around them. I planted some trees the year before and they got swamped by grasses and growth is very stunted.
Don’t tackle it all at once but start from one edge and work your way through. It would be long work but cutting and removing the cut grass and weeds might be the way to go. Aim for a natural meadow. There’s great resources on how to create natural meadows online.
Best of luck and take your time with it
I’m in the middle of something similar, and I wish I had planned it out properly before planting the trees!
I’ve laid down the black plastic silage sheet over about a third of the space that I need to kill off the grass. I had the plastic down for a year in the first section, and when I pulled it up in scraped up the surface and scattered yellow rattle seeds and then light rolled them in.
I now have the second section under the black plastic, and come next Autumn I’ll take up the plastic and scatter more yellow rattle and then the same for the final third in another year.
It’s obviously taking an absolute age, but this is realistically all I’m able to do at the moment.
Good luck with your project, hope it works out 👍
I don’t blame you for wanting to avoid weedkiller but this will be a massive amount of work and the seeds are not cheap, so bear that in mind.
You need to remove as much grass as possible. Cut it as short as you can, right down to the ground, and then either rotavate it, or scarify the hell out of it with a machine. You need bare earth for the seeds to make good contact and with decent ground like you have the grass and other weeds will take over very easily so look for a mix with yellow rattle as it is parasitic on grass and pull any undesirable weeds. Look for native seeds mixes, using Irish seed. They are not cheap, but they are better than non-native imported shite.
Only alternative I can think of to make life easier is to pick a section and use a tarp to cover it and start your meadow off there, you could use the seeds from there to work on your next area.
Just remember that the wildflower meadows that you see in pics don’t just happen overnight and take work to keep going.
Best of luck.
I am trying to work on something similar , i hope you try the cardboard and “no dig method” , I ordered 20sqm of cardboard today to try it out , I plan on a mix of top soil, organic matter from the compost heap and wildflower seeds after that . Not expecting much but it’s worth a shot