This is a brief one today, because A. I’m sore from 3 days of moving soil, weeding, pruning, and mowing and 2. it’s going to be over 100 degrees today and the watering is constant.
TIP: You can’t over-water in 90+ weather.
The wildflower meadow we started over a year ago is finally producing flowers.
In the fall of 2023, we laid out most of our moving boxes to cover a patch of unused lawn. We raked up pine needles to cover it and hold it in place. I watered it down with a hose—and then we left it for a year.
This spring I raked off the pine needles and the cardboard boxes had decomposed completely.
I scattered wildflower meadow seed mix and kept it watered throughout the spring. The birds also liked the seed, and I began to worry when a month later it looked like this
And then I got busy with other gardening tasks in other parts of the property, planting, painting, building new structures. And the next time I looked:
And then:
And now:
We’re expanding into areas that get enough sun:
You can dig up the sod and seed immediately in spring or fall, of course, but we had so many boxes left from moving we decided to use them.
The next task for the meadow is thinning, which I’ll do later in the season. This feels wrong, but it actually helps the meadow thrive. I also plan to plant some plugs of things, mostly natives that didn’t seed—like echinacea. And I have some purple love grass plugs as well. Grasses are important for some pollinators to nest in.
I love all Echinacea, but I want the OG native one for the wildflower meadow.
Happy gardening💚 See you next week🐝🌼🌞🐞 Stay cool😎
I adore this meadow! I would love to expand my little pollinator garden into something like this eventually. Most likely after I get this neighborhood-wide thistle infestation under control 😅
Looks great! We also started a small wildflower meadow. I’m finding the partridge pea in the seed mix a mistake / it’s going to take over. We have not attempted thinning anything though. I’ll send you a photo on Bluesky bc I can’t figure that out here. This is its 3rd year. It was burned late winter and really thriving now!