The Meadow Makers' Network Forum

Hello
I'm a complete newbie to this so just trying to work out what's required. I'm thinking I'll need to harrow the ground after flailing to expose about 50% of the soil? Looking at harrows I'm thinking a chain harrow would do the job. What harrow do other users recommend? Thanks LankyL

In my experience, chain harrows are not the best implement. They might work at a push if you haven't got anything else and haven't got a big area, but it'll take a while before you have any exposed earth. A spring tine cultivator, like a triple k would be better. Mind that if you are flailing the sward first to collect what you've cut, and also to pick up the arisings after you've harrowed/cultivated, otherwise you'll have clumps of high fertility at the end of rows, etc.

You need to create bare soil but not deeply cultivated soil, a triple K type machine tends to go too deep and just pull up clumps of turf leaving a very rough surface. I do quite a bit of meadow establishment and maintenance locally and use a Scarrow from TracTek Engineering (www.Tractekeng.com ). It is a more aggressive grass harrow purpose built for the job and has a seed spinner mounted on it too. I usually take off the bulk of the vegetation with a flail collector, go over the ground a couple of times with the Scarrow then third time switch the seed spinner on. Finally a very light rolling just to firm the seed in. It works well, I did trials with the Devon Wildlife Trust with it last year and the results have been very good. Plus as it doesn't rip up what you have already you can repeat in a year or two to top up the seed bank or add some different species.