The Meadow Makers' Network Forum

Hi all just seeking some advice, me and my family started a 'wildflower meadow' last year in my home of Scotland on an unused grass field we own. We rotavated the soil to try to get rid of the grass and sowed a mixture of 75% grass spp and 25% native wildflower species. The majority came up in ox eye daisies, fumitory, poppies and the rest pretty much a load of grass. We didn't cut the grass unfortunately last year...but this year want to do better however there is now nothing but grass.

My family want to put glyphosate over the area to kill off the grass and just try and start from scratch. I am really against using any form of chemicals. Any advice on what to do would be so great!! We can't unfortunately just take off the top layer of soil because we don't have farm machinery for that and can't do it by hand as the area is around 900m by 800m.

Huge thanks in advance!!

You don't really mean 900m x 800m, do you? OK, when you say that it was an "unused" grass field, what do you mean, what was its history? What grass species were in the field, and was there a reason why you resowed the area with more grass seed? Oxeye, fumitory and poppies establish very quickly - the later two being arable annuals. My bet would be that fumitory and poppies were in the mix as a nursery crop - flowers that establish and flower in the first year before the longer lasting grassland perennials establish, often in the second year after sowing. Are you sure other perennial species were not present last year in leaf form only? The thing about wild flower meadows is that they are not instant creations! When you say you rotovated the area, do you mean as you would a vegetable garden, or just to create some bare earth in the sward? If it was the former, then yellow rattle, which would have been in the mix, may not have established. Personally, if it was my meadow, I would graze the field right now, see what comes up this year, the graze/cut and collect late-Summer/early-Autumn - meadows have to be managed. And then perhaps sow some yellow rattle into some small areas later this Autumn. Good luck!

p.s. you should join us for our upcoming How to Create a Meadow talk: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=146