The Meadow Makers' Network Forum

I am in the process of setting up a More Meadows West Devon hub for people living in West Devon or near by. In the future we hope to organise local events such as meadow open days. I live near St Giles on the Heath and there are already half a dozen of us in this area or close by who are keen to form a new group. We would love to hear from people in other parts of West Devon. My first task is to establish a steering group to share out any work involved. If you may be interested in helping or simply joining the group you can reply to this post or email me direct on jon.valters@btinternet.com
Best wishes
Jon

Hi Jon
I live in West Devon, just outside Buckland Monachorum, and have a couple of fairly steep fields which have been grazed by sheep over the years. We are having some work done in one of the fields which will mean that the grass is removed, and rather than re-seeding with grass I would like to turn it into a regionally appropriate wildflower meadow. Any advice on preparation, seed mixes and sources, and maintenance would be very welcome.
David

Hi David,

Thank you for getting in touch. It sounds a great project. It would be useful to know if you have a date when the work will be carried out? Do we have a deadline to work to here?! First of all I would suggest you put another post on the general forum under the Making Meadows section about your plans and repeat the same post under Topics in the West Devon section to see if you can get further advice from other members or an offer of seed from a meadow owner local to you.
It would useful to know more about the history of the site, how long its been grazed etc, your soil type, whether you've had the soil tested, and whether you already have some wild flowers in these fields? And also the size of the area you wish to turn into meadow and what work is being carried out? Have you owned the land for long?
We have a member of the group who only recently did a similiar project so he may be able to provide you with some advice. There's no doubt that obtaining seed from a flower-rich meadow nearby would be the best option which is why getting word out there is your best bet - depending how much time we have! Obviously the best option will be grazing the site in the future - do you have sheep or cattle? Apologies for so many questions but the more information we have the better. Best wishes Jon

Hi Jon
We are having a ground source heat pump installed which requires some levelling of part of the field, and the work to do this has already started, so some of the surface soil/grass has already been removed. The work should be finished by the end of April, so ready for seeding then. The area that will be affected by this is small (approx. 450 sq. m.), so I was planning to start with that and extend the area of meadow if successful (we own about 6 acres in total). The farm dates back to the 15th C. but we have only lived here for 27 years so I can't vouch for what happened before that, although the field in question was listed as an orchard in the tithe apportionment of the 1840s. During our tenure it has been intermittently grazed by sheep, but never for long. We get some self-seeded mullein, ox eye daises and foxgloves at the edges, but the majority of the field is scrubby grass with plenty of docks, hogweed and some stinging nettles in places. I have never tested the soil in that field but generally we are farily acidic round here and things like azaleas and camellias do well. We don't have our own stock, and our local farmer, whose sheep grazed it in the past to keep it down, no longer keeps any sheep, so last year I had to resort to strimming it at the end of the summer. I am afraid I have no expertise at all in this area but having recently retired I now have the time and space to try to restore some of our land.
I will summarise all this and add posts as you suggest, but in the meantime any advice would be most welcome.
BW
David

This is a good place to buy seed; I have grown with their seed. It sounds like your soils are slightly acidic if they like camellias and hydrangeas. ttps://www.wildflower.co.uk
I am in West Devon and I have a wildflower meadow, and I would like to join in the West Devon Group!

Hello David,
As with many projects it is the preparation beforehand that determines the final outcome. I believe the creation of a clean seedbed prior to sowing any meadow seed (or laying green hay) is essential if existing 'undesirable' weeds are not to rapidly recolonize the area.
Simply cultivating the ground (typically ploughing or rotovating) will only expose any buried seeds ('the seed or weed bank') for subsequent germination and, may, in the case of perennial weeds, increase their number by breaking up the existing rootstocks into smaller fragments (particularly true of couch grass and almost certainly true for the docks).
Ideally I would have suggested treating the intended meadow area with the herbicide glyphosate (systemic, non-selective, deactivated upon soil absorption) before any cultivation. As you have already begun work on the area, I would now wait until you have refilled the GSHP trenches and roughly levelled and cultivated the soil. Then wait to see what comes up following any rain. You may have to wait several months to properly assess the situation but I'm guessing you will see plenty of weeds. It is then, if necessary, you should treat with glyphosate.
I would do a second, finer cultivation, say in August, to prepare a suitable seedbed for actual sowing, say in September. Exact dates depend on the weather, of course. If it happens to rain after this cultivation you may well see another flush of weed germination and you could consider a second application of glyphosate; as it is deactivated on contact with soil this spraying can be done very shortly before sowing your meadow seed.
Only having carried out this rather lengthy preparation would I then sow the meadow-which, by comparison, is both easy and enjoyable.
In summary, I have recommended using soil cultivation and glyphosate treatment (probably twice) to arrive at a clean seed bed. If the issue was only annual or biennial weeds then simply repeat cultivations (to creat a 'stale seedbed') would reduce the problem. But with perennial weeds, such as dock, then glyphosate is the most effective treatment. Of course, not everyone is happy about using glyphosate and you could resort to hand weeding or even learn to 'love your weeds' ...but these approaches have their downsides too.
Good luck with your meadow creation! Please keep us informed as to the results, whichever approach you take.

I am surprised to see anyone recommending glyphosate. The success of any plant depends on the prevalence of the right bacteria, fungi and animal micro-organisms in the soil. Glyphosate will kill the lot.
There are also suspicions that it is responsible for cancers in humans who handle it.
I'd rather have the weeds!

For anyone who is interested in a fact-based and balanced review of glyphosate I suggest they visit the Wikipedia entry. There you will find very little evidence for most if not all of the effects alleged by the last entry-and plenty of evidence indicating the opposite.

Glyphosate is a safe and effective treatment, particularly useful when trying to deal with unwanted and difficult perennial weeds. Its immediate and strong absorption to soil particles essentially stops any of the alleged adverse effects on soil microflora and fauna. Any sprayed soil will infact be rapidly recolonized by plants-which is hard tally with something that is supposed to have such a detrimental effect on soil.

Use of glyphosate is simply one of the tools and methods that can be used in the creation and management of a meadow. No one is obliged to use it but nor should anyone feel that it is unsafe or 'wrong' to do so.

If goes without saying that glyphosate should be used according to the manufacturer's instructions, and its use in a meadow should be kept to a minimum.

Hello John
Why should its use be 'of course' kept to a minimum?

OK, I admit that "glyphosate will kill the lot" is an exaggeration. I perhaps should have reflected a bit more before firing off my post.

However, there is a large body of evidence of the damage that glyphosate causes, in terms of soil health. For example, consider the following, from Biomineraltechnologies.com:

"Glyphosate is an extremely efficient anti-microbial product, targeting almost exclusively the beneficial microbes.

The beneficial soil microbes are very sensitive to glyphosate, with extreme results at even very low concentrations (as low as .01 ppm). So applying glyphosate essentially wipes out your protective soil microorganisms, leaving it open to the proliferation of pathogenic organisms (disease)."

This is one of four adverse effects cited, the others being that it inhibits manganese absorption, it chelates (ties up) many nutrients, making them unavailable to the plant, and it stimulates the production of pathogenic organisms.

A paper from the Soil Association raises similar concerns, although it acknowledges that research has produced conflicting results and that there is no definitive view of the effects of this chemical. It also cites studies showing detrimental effects on mycorrhizal fungi and on earthworms.

https://www.soilassociation.org/media/7 ... report.pdf

Important as the science is, however, I have a more philosophical objection to the use of glyphosate, or any other chemical, in meadow-making. We know that wildflowers, invertebrates and animals further up the food chain flourished when grasslands were managed by humans without advanced technology, using scythes and grazing animals, largely mimicking natural processes. In our longing to see the species-rich meadows return, do we really want to resort to the technology of intensive 20th or 21st century farming? Isn't that just repeating the mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place?