Wild Flower Meadow Seed (Bulk Source)

KOR101

I have a 2/3 acre site which I'm planting with grass seed. I'm planning to just let the grass grow, cutting it once a year. I want to mix in wild flowers with the grass.

I'm dublin based -where would I find the flower seeds in bulk at a good price?

peadar76

Have you researched this? I've a wild flower meadow but to be honest, it's not really a success. The main problem as I see it is that the grass dominates. Plus when it all gets quite tall, during the first wet windy spell, it all collapses. I think, in general irish soil is too good and that's why the grass takes over. Ideally some of the really fertile topsoil should be removed and replaced with less fertile soil. Next year I'm going to cut it once a month and see how that looks.

KOR101

Found this.

http://www.nad.ie/

They do 1kg bags.

Clseeper

Planning to do this myself on my site but haven't gotten around to it yet (still building)

I did go on a visit/talk by Sandro Cafolla of Design by Nature http://www.wildflowers.ie/

He focuses on native varieties and all the prices are up on the website.

Peader: One thing I did learn was he includes Yellow Rattle in some of their mixes. This is a parasitic plant variety which stunts grass growth and helps keep grass at bay and allow the other species time to grow/establish.

magicbastarder

peadar76 wrote: »

Next year I'm going to cut it once a month and see how that looks.

one option is to cut it regularly and remove the cuttings, which will reduce the fertility of the soil.

I would definitely cut it every 6 to 8 weeks. Letting it grow all year will let grass take over. I keep mine cut until may then let it off. Cut it every 8 weeks then.

The Garden Shop

Hello All.

You can have great sucess with wildflower meadows so long as you prepare the site first
1. Mark out & spray the area is glyphosate
2. allow 3 weeks for growth to die back
3. Grub up the surface soil
4. Then sow

In terms of maintenance, this varies on sits & age of meadow
in the first year you should weed out or spot weed any grass / sctuch that comes up
You can cut as often as you like - depending on what height of meadow you desire


If you top your meadow once over the summer it will keep the meadow down and it will flower again after approx six weeks

Then once flowers have all died back in autumn you should cut the meadow down and remove the cuttings. This will spread the seed for the following year

Different mixes have different sowing rates
Some mixes included Chaff - this bulks up the mix and makes even spreading easier

KOR101

Turns out the NAD bag is 60% grass.

So, still looking for source of big amount.

mallowgarry

I'm in a group trying to establish a wild flower meadow in a graveyard, about 2/3 of an acre. We tried €40 worth of seed in a test patch from http://www.wildflowers.ie/ .

We were warned that these seeds can have quite a high failure rate, but only one variety grew out of approximately 10 in the mix. Some may need frost / winter to force germination, but we're not overly impressed.

I recently bought small quantities of various wild flower seeds from www.seedaholic.com. They all germinated.

Some of the packets have up to 100,000 seeds for €4.32 (Corn Poppy). I am very tempted to make up our own mixture. The seeds are tiny, so will need to cut / mix them with sand or sawdust or a similar cutting medium, then make sure they are evenly mixed with a full bag of compost or screened soil.

www.seedaholic.com also offer larger quantities of mixtures....

I'd definitely recommend The Garden Shop's 1,2,3,4 approach above. Using glyphosate is the only realistic low-labour approach to getting started. Watch the weather forecast and sow before rain...

We were told that B+Q also sell wild flower mixes, and another Irish firm were selling bags of "seed bombs", but failed to locate either.

KOR101

mallowgarry wrote: »

I'm in a group trying to establish a wild flower meadow in a graveyard, about 2/3 of an acre. We tried €40 worth of seed in a test patch from http://www.wildflowers.ie/ .

We were warned that these seeds can have quite a high failure rate, but only one variety grew out of approximately 10 in the mix. Some may need frost / winter to force germination, but we're not overly impressed.

I recently bought small quantities of various wild flower seeds from www.seedaholic.com. They all germinated.

Some of the packets have up to 100,000 seeds for €4.32 (Corn Poppy). I am very tempted to make up our own mixture. The seeds are tiny, so will need to cut / mix them with sand or sawdust or a similar cutting medium, then make sure they are evenly mixed with a full bag of compost or screened soil.

www.seedaholic.com also offer larger quantities of mixtures....

I'd definitely recommend The Garden Shop's 1,2,3,4 approach above. Using glyphosate is the only realistic low-labour approach to getting started. Watch the weather forecast and sow before rain...

We were told that B+Q also sell wild flower mixes, and another Irish firm were selling bags of "seed bombs", but failed to locate either.

That was really helpful.

I had gotten the NAD reference from Tully's nursery. But, they said they didn't stock it themselves because it was expensive and the failure rate was so high.

I was actually looking to mix the flower seed into grass seed that I was sowing. The grass seeding went ahead without the flower seeds as I needed to get it going in early September. So, now I have to figure out how to get the flower seed into the preexisting grass.

Will certainly check out Seedaholic.

[Just bought the wild flower mix. Will let you know how I got on]

KOR101

The Garden Shop wrote: »

Hello All.

You can have great sucess with wildflower meadows so long as you prepare the site first
1. Mark out & spray the area is glyphosate
2. allow 3 weeks for growth to die back
3. Grub up the surface soil
4. Then sow

In terms of maintenance, this varies on sits & age of meadow
in the first year you should weed out or spot weed any grass / sctuch that comes up
You can cut as often as you like - depending on what height of meadow you desire


If you top your meadow once over the summer it will keep the meadow down and it will flower again after approx six weeks

Then once flowers have all died back in autumn you should cut the meadow down and remove the cuttings. This will spread the seed for the following year

Different mixes have different sowing rates
Some mixes included Chaff - this bulks up the mix and makes even spreading easier

Is there a time of year that is best to do the initial sow?

Day Lewin

Just be careful of things like Corn Marigold etc if you live in a cereal growing area!
Always remove grass clippings with the following exception: if you wish for plants like cowslip and bee orchids etc to re-seed themselves, leave the grass cuttings to lie on the ground for a couple of days so the seed falls out. Then remove, to reduce fertility.
Ideally, the fertility of the soil will be coming from things like the clovers and birdsfoot-trefoil. [they secrete nitrogen from the air into the ground).
Take a good look at what grows naturally in your area - this will be a good clue as to what plants will flourish. What is on the local grass verges? Damp or dry, high or lowland, acid or alkaline?
If done well, a meadow glowing with wildflowers can look stunning and be easy to care for, too.
Experience helps a lot, mind you.
Best of luck!

MOTM

No need to so grass in my experience. It will grow without your help...that's my experience at least. I've now got yellow rattle to combat the grass and its working. Ox eye daisies, ragged robin are doing well. Agrimoney, common knapweed and cranesbill have emerged this year of their own accord. Goldenrod also works.

A lot of the original flowers I sowed failed after the first year such as mustard, corn marigold,.cornflower, poppy. I won't be buying them again.

Going to let yellow rattle knock back the grass for a few years and try source some reliable hardy perrenials to fit in.

KOR101

katemarch wrote: »

If done well, a meadow glowing with wildflowers can look stunning and be easy to care for, too.

This is just a newly purchased house, and after six months I hadn't cut the grass. So, the grass got very long, and lots of flowers and weeds got going in the grass.

But, the thing is, it looked so well, that I thought I'd just do the rest of the front of the site (which wasn't in grass) the same way. I'm on the side of a mountain by the way, so the wild look fits in perfectly.

peadar76

What is yellow rattle and where could I get some?

MOTM

peadar76 wrote: »

What is yellow rattle and where could I get some?

The following article is a good outline

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2012/sep/27/yellow-rattle-meadow-grassland

mallowgarry

peadar76 wrote: »

What is yellow rattle and where could I get some?

http://www.seedaholic.com/rhinanthus-minor-yellow-rattle.html

(I'm not plugging this website. I've tried seeds from others, they failed, but I've had almost 100% success with seeds from this site.)

mallowgarry

KOR101 wrote: »

Is there a time of year that is best to do the initial sow?

Some of the seeds (like Yellow Rattle) require cold to germinate, so they basically need to be planted now.

Seedaholic lady sends out v. comprehensive Info sheets on each variety, so it's a judgement call on Autumn or Spring/early summer sowing.

It's getting late in the season, so don't dally if you go down the Autumn road, perhaps keeping some of the seed back for Spring.

Up to yesterday, I wasn't even aware of Yellow Rattle, but it sounds perfect for your situation i.e. trying to get flowers established in existing grass. The only other option I could think of was that you could redden lines or patches within the grass area, and hopefully the flowers would spread from these. By setting straight lines, you can tell the seeds from the weeds.

Use v. little soil on top of the seeds.....absolute minimum.

I'm tempted to dry out a bag of peat moss, use a cement mixer to evenly mix the seeds within it, then sow the peat / seed mix i.e. just barely rake it into the soil.

(someone gave me a box of Lidl Wild Flower mix yesterday, will sow that in a different area.)

Even though we had 90+% failure in our test patch, one variety of yellow wildflower grew. They are literally falling over with the volume of bees, so we are hoping it will all be worth it.....

KOR101

mallowgarry wrote: »

Some of the seeds (like Yellow Rattle) require cold to germinate, so they basically need to be planted now.

Seedaholic lady sends out v. comprehensive Info sheets on each variety, so it's a judgement call on Autumn or Spring/early summer sowing.

It's getting late in the season, so don't dally if you go down the Autumn road, perhaps keeping some of the seed back for Spring.

Up to yesterday, I wasn't even aware of Yellow Rattle, but it sounds perfect for your situation i.e. trying to get flowers established in existing grass. The only other option I could think of was that you could redden lines or patches within the grass area, and hopefully the flowers would spread from these. By setting straight lines, you can tell the seeds from the weeds.

Use v. little soil on top of the seeds.....absolute minimum.

I'm tempted to dry out a bag of peat moss, use a cement mixer to evenly mix the seeds within it, then sow the peat / seed mix i.e. just barely rake it into the soil.

(someone gave me a box of Lidl Wild Flower mix yesterday, will sow that in a different area.)

Even though we had 90+% failure in our test patch, one variety of yellow wildflower grew. They are literally falling over with the volume of bees, so we are hoping it will all be worth it.....

Thanks for the advice. I've been on the lookout for Lidl/Aldi wildflower seeds. Haven't managed to spot them yet.

taxusbaccata

Its better to source native seed if possible.

I found some native seed suppliers:

seedaholic.com/flowers/natives-wildflowers.html - based in Westport

fruithillfarm.com/seeds-and-propagation/organic-seeds/flower-meadow-seed-mixes.html

I've bought several items from both companies and they have top quality organic based items where possible.

I'm waiting to get a plot of land to let my wildflowers loose.
This is what I understand to date and plan to do:
I will bulldoze the site top layer of soil down to the sandier layers for poor fertility - the top soil will be used for raised beds. I am going to wait until any grass or rushes germinate end of March and avoid heavy rain erosion over the winter. Seed end of March/early April.
(I refuse to use Glyphosphate poison - maybe in the future I will give in if I ever have to battle Japanese Knotweed or similar)
Some species will not germinate in the first year, patience is required.
Cut the meadow 3 times the first 2 years then once in autumn thereafter.
Leave the seeds to fall for about 5 days then remove the surface vegetation to keep fertility low.

This is an excellent forum posting to help:
gardenplansireland.com/forum/about988.html

SILVAMAN

Google search a wholsale supplier online and you'll get a great deal. I despair when I see people forking out €€€€s for small amounts.