Green-tech's John Chambers' seasonal wildflower growing tips

Stuart Ball from Green-tech's John Chambers Wildflower Seeds shares his secrets with BALI on the best time and place to prepare, sow and maintain wildflower seeds in Spring, including sowing rates, quantities and the mixing balance, to achieve a perfect, colourful, quality display all through the season.

PART 1 - PREPARATION

Spring is around the corner and it’s about time to start preparing any areas that are earmarked for new Wildflower sowings this season.

For starters, the area needs to be prepared by removing any existing vegetation, this may include, or be followed by, a light rotovation – but beware! Do not rotovate too deep as this will potentially churn up an alarming amount of ‘weed’ seed that has built up over 10’s of years! It is preferable to work only in the top 2 or 3 inches, thus limiting the amount of dormant seed that may be awoken!

One of the most important things is to start with a clean seed bed. This means allowing any existing seed already in the soil, to germinate and start to grow, before removing by the preferred method. Ideally, this process will be carried out 2, or even 3, times, before the final seed bed can be prepared with a light raking and is ready for sowing.