It all started with a patch of muddy paddock where the cows had churned up the clay soil. A place where they were fed hay and in the process they had "enriched" the earth.
The cows had since been moved off the land and I saw the opportunity for establishing a wildflower bed.
I was sure it would work. Again I wasn't able to dig the soil because my shoulder was still recovering, so I improvised. I dragged a rake across the drying soil so that it was broken up 5 cm deep, per some instructions I had found somewhere on the internet.
Then I decided to cover the whole area with a 10 cm deep layer of composted pine tree sawdust that we had. I mixed that into the soil with the rake. After that I covered it with straw to compost more and to keep it moist.
I kept my fingers crossed that earthworms would move into my wildflower area and do their work, helping to make the soil deeper.
I checked after a month and it had worked, there was wonderful soil under the hay and hundreds of earthworms of all sizes!
In the meantime I was busy buying wilflower seeds:
- shirley poppies of many colours
- blue cornflowers
- yellow, orange and red cosmos
- red coreopsis
- linaria in jewel colours
- orange Californian poppies
- and lots more.
I was in heaven!
I finally lifted the hay off the prepared area and raked the soil to 5 cm deep again. Then mixed together all the seeds that I had bought and sprinkled them over the whole area. It was great fun.
Then I gently watered the seeds in and waited.
I watered every day and finally seedlings popped up. I was so happy. I carried on watering for a few weeks when the weather was hot and dry. The seeds should really have been sown at the beginning of Spring 2 months before, but I was lucky, my plan worked out.
Lots of smiles,
Rose x
Edit: You can see an update of my wildflower garden here.
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