Another wildflower bed in the making

For the past week I have been busy preparing another wild flower bed. This new one is 200 metres squared (4 metres wide by 50 metres long). We marked out the area in the paddock first and then dad mowed it with his ride on mower. We then paid a contractor to rotavate the area by tractor. The area was too big to tackle by hand.

There was a delay in sowing the wild flower seed due to rain and high winds for a few days. The rain was much needed though to settle the soil down. When the rain stopped I divided the wildflower patch into eighths with markers. Then I used 780 grams of wildflower seed in total mixing 98 g of seed at a time with 2 L of fine pumice stone in 8 batches. I then sowed the seed by hand.

This morning I finished sowing the wildflower seed, yaaaay! It was a fun job to do, if a little bit back breaking. I felt like a farmer of olden days sowing a crop by hand. It was quite therapeutic.

The birds have found my seed to be irresistible to eat, especially the doves. The blackbirds have been turning over the soil looking for worms. And the rabbits have been digging holes at the edge of the wildflower bed. Sighs. Luckily I sowed the seed densely. Dad and I covered the seed finely using eight 40 L bags of compost, so hopefully this will slow the birds down.

Now it is a matter of keeping my fingers and toes crossed that the seeds will germinate. We are expecting light rain over the next few days, so that will help. Because the area is so big we aren't able to water it ourselves, so it is up to nature to do its thing.

It is exciting waiting for the flowers to pop up. The seed was a mixture of 30 different types of flowers which were un-named on the packets. I recognised poppies, cornflowers, calendula, French marigold, cosmos and scabious seed. I hope that the flowers will be blooming by Christmas time :)

Time now for a cup of tea and some more colouring in.

I hope that you have a good week.

See you next time.

Hugs.

Rose x