How do I get the weeds/grass out of my wildflower meadow?
by
Fred
+2
The wildflowers were planted 2 years ago right after our house was built. First year, not bad, a little thin. We raked and overseeded last fall and spring. The weeds and grasses have taken over and choked out the flowers. Any way to restore this without using chemicals and not hand pulling every weed (not sure what's weed, what's flowers)?
Related Discussions
Suggested Project Book
you will have to dig them out
People swear by using boiling water to kill them. Here’s a link that gives you more options, too. All cheap and pretty much home made.
https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/homemade-herbicide-kill-weeds-without-killing-earth.html
It might be a bit hard to separate the flower roots from the weeds/grass but if you try it, and a couple days later it works, you are golden.
Usually those wildflower mixes have grass seeds unfortunately in them. Most wildflowers technically as a former rangeland/wildlife biologist are weeds. Most horticultural flowers were wildflowers taken from the wild, then bred to become our wonderful garden ornaments.
Whenever you disturb land.... you will get weeds and grasses from animal and bird droppings, wind distribution ,,, nature in action. Hard to fight mother nature without a lot of effort. In the studies we performed the most effective way was to run line of chains on a tractor pull bar over the soil to remove all vegetation, and then reseed. Worked better than any of the numerous herbicides we used in trials.
were the wildflowers self-sowing annuals, or perennials?
the annuals can have a problem competing with the grass (which is a natural part of a meadow) so repeated hand-sowing may be needed.
knowing what 'weeds' you are having trouble with would also help.
Perhaps you can collect the seeds from the flowers that are growing and over seed with them. Maybe you can choke out some of the grasses and weeds you don't want.