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Trying to grow them down one side of the garden. I've prepared the soil, sowed the seeds, watered them morning and night and all I've ended up with is an abundance of weeds! Anyone had any success with this sort of thing?
Sorry for the picture, they're the only ones I have and I'm not at home. To the right of this piece of grass is where I'm trying, near the fence. Will get some better pics.
Even Plymouth City Council can pull it off and they never succeed at anything!
Yep. We tried doing this. Dug up a corner in our back garden to make a flower bed. Ordered packs of wild flower seeds online and sprinkled them over the soil, raked it gently, kept it watered etc. Absolutely cr@p Nothing hardly grew other than a few tiny pathetic things.
I dug out an old hedge in my garden with a mini digger and filled the "flower bed" back in and levelled. Gonna be grass seeding it soon when it's a little cooler.
And yet the 'Unsprayed Headlands' initiative that began back in the '80s, mainly to encourage partridge stocks, resulted in the resurrection of wild flowers and insects, some of which had been thought to be extinct, especially some butterfly species. And this was in soil that for years had been heavily treated with insecticides, herbicides and fertiliser.
And yet the 'Unsprayed Headlands' initiative that began back in the '80s, mainly to encourage partridge stocks, resulted in the resurrection of wild flowers and insects, some of which had been thought to be extinct, especially some butterfly species. And this was in soil that for years had been heavily treated with insecticides, herbicides and fertiliser.
They love poor soil. I'm wondering if our's is too fertile. Will cost me about £400 for the 'Meadowmat', but the missus is worried we'll splash out and the rabbits will destroy the new shoots.
Yep. We tried doing this. Dug up a corner in our back garden to make a flower bed. Ordered packs of wild flower seeds online and sprinkled them over the soil, raked it gently, kept it watered etc. Absolutely cr@p Nothing hardly grew other than a few tiny pathetic things.
I dug out an old hedge in my garden with a mini digger and filled the "flower bed" back in and levelled. Gonna be grass seeding it soon when it's a little cooler.
I feel your pain, L. The reading I've done this afternoon suggests it's blinkin' hard work to get a result.
I have visions of the Jehovah Witness enforcement section turning up at the warren with a copy of the watchtower in one hand and a silenced Beretta in the other
If the aim is to provide bee and butterfly-friendly flora, bite the bullet and plant a long row of lavender all along that fence, punctuated with buddleias every few meters. The Mrs can then keep the annual crop of pruned lavender heads for pot pourrit and so on, or to stuff in drawers and cupboards to ward off clothes moths.
We have given certain parts of our garden over to mother nature - and it is lovely to see how many butterflies and bees it promotes
Ps I am a Londoner, who amazingly, now has quite a large garden in the country and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing
I seem to do quite a lot of what I call "combat" gardening - which mainly entails bushcutting, chainsawing and building huge bonfires (I really enjoy it tub)
I've got some giant buddliea at work...if you can't grow them then nothing will grow LOL, the things seed down and grow through Tarmac!
In terms of the seeds I lay blame down to either birds, the wascally wabbits can eat the larger seeds, and not to forget crawling insects or rot if the soil is over-fertile and too wet.
Maybe next time get some large trays or baskets and start the seeds off in there and transfer them once established?
The only seeds I've ever had success with sowing straight into the ground is ryegrass!
I have no problem with growing chillis from seeds (just use tomato compost and lots of tomato feed once flowering).
I did this at my last house, I mixed packets of wild-flower seeds into the grass seed mix I put down in early spring, using string and plastic bags to keep the birds away. What I failed to consider was that the grass would grow quickly and would need to be cut, and this couldn't be done without felling the flowers, so for me was an epic waste of effort.
I have scatterd a load of random seeds this year in a raised flowerbed - the only thing which seems to have done well is cornflowers, and these weird things called sea lavender, nothing else seemed to grow at all.
In the other hand, the stuff I started from seed in the green house and planted out in another bed, has done very well.
PS - possibly the most middle-aged, middle-class thread I have seen on Scoobynet for some time!!!
Hey did you roll/flatten the soil after seeding it? Really helps the seeds grow a firm root.
Also with wildflower meadows their first year will always be thin, they need to reseed themselves so it should be better the second year.
I planted 270 square metres of traditional wildflower mix in march.. Plymouth councils looks better than mine too! No idea what they've done differently! 😂
I was only just talking to my partner the other day about Buddliea. It's literally everywhere at the moment! I'm starting to refer to it as a weed now. Seriously, they're massive and appear to grow almost everywhere .
I was only just talking to my partner the other day about Buddliea. It's literally everywhere at the moment! I'm starting to refer to it as a weed now. Seriously, they're massive and appear to grow almost everywhere .
And don't park your car too near buddleia, it drops some green stuff that sticks and doesn't easily clean off.
Took some pictures earlier this afternoon of my efforts due to this thread.
Last week my partner and I made some new hanging baskets for our utility area of the house. It's the first time we've bought and made hanging baskets and I'm really pleased with them. We're going to get a large hanging trough to fill a large space of our wall eventually:
Our one and only flower bed near the entrance of our property filled with Dahlias, Cosmos, French Marigolds, Zinnas, Lavender and Hebes. The Dahlias have done amazing this years:
Last edited by LSherratt; Jul 31, 2016 at 09:13 PM.
If the aim is to provide bee and butterfly-friendly flora, bite the bullet and plant a long row of lavender all along that fence, punctuated with buddleias every few meters. The Mrs can then keep the annual crop of pruned lavender heads for pot pourrit and so on, or to stuff in drawers and cupboards to ward off clothes moths.
We've a load of Lavender by the front door. As you say the bees and, to a lesser extent the butterflies, love it. I just don't know if we want more of the same.
Hey did you roll/flatten the soil after seeding it? Really helps the seeds grow a firm root.
Also with wildflower meadows their first year will always be thin, they need to reseed themselves so it should be better the second year.
I planted 270 square metres of traditional wildflower mix in march.. Plymouth councils looks better than mine too! No idea what they've done differently! 😂
Hi, Mark. I didn't roller it although I did stamp them in to the ground. I might have to get Plymouth Council up to do ours.
Took some pictures earlier this afternoon of my efforts due to this thread.
Last week my partner and I made some new hanging baskets for our utility area of the house. It's the first time we've bought and made hanging baskets and I'm really pleased with them. We're going to get a large hanging trough to fill a large space of our wall eventually:
Our one and only flower bed near the entrance of our property filled with Dahlias, Cosmos, French Marigolds, Zinnas, Lavender and Hebes. The Dahlias have done amazing this years:
Wild flowers.
Nothing hardly grew other than a few tiny pathetic things. 
.
