patandchickens
Deeply Rooted
My first tip is that you need to recognize that the photos you see on the labels of "Wildflower Meadow In A Can" and so forth are TOTALLY COMPLETLEY HUGELY BOGUSgauthierspeeps said:
They do NOT represent anything that you can easily establish in a typical lawn without a huge amount of work, some years of waiting and working, and quite frankly *avoidance* of any cheap 'wildflower meadow in a can' type products Also recognize that flowers, virtually all of them (but see below), are significantly taller than people mow their lawn grass. Thus, if you want purty flowers in your lawn you have to NOT MOW. (Or mow just once in early spring and once int he fall). Is this acceptible to you.
If it is, next time you are driving down the highway with the lovely wildflower type meadows or solid blocks of crimson clover or whatever you're admiring at the moment, pull over onto the shoulder somewhere safe and hop out real quick and walk up to the actual patch of flowers. Take a close, hard look. You will see that what appears to be 'all flowers' from a distance is actually in large part grasses, bare dirt, and what people conventionally call weeds. And quite messy-looking for much of the year. (The exception is a stand of Penngift crown vetch, but that is not suitable for a yard, believe me!). Is the close-up appearance acceptible to you -- remembering that you will be viewing your yard up close and not from fifty feet away at 60 mph
Still want to do it? (I'd really really recommend starting with just a limited patch for a few years til you decide you definitely like it)
Ok, for something like clovers, just rake the heck out of your lawn with a metal bow rake (not leaf rake) to expose little patches of bare soil, then overseed. You may have to mail-order red clover seed, but some other clovers are economically purchaseable in quantity at feed stores. Heck, garden centers here have started carrying white clover in bulk
Some other flowers can be overseeded successfully like this, but all are basically annuals, and you will have a lowe enough germination rate that you'd spend a LOT of money on seed to do the full yard.
But to get the full-tilt-boogie flowering-prairie look, you would have to basically kill ALL of the existing grass, improve the soil, seed or plant lotsa expensive plugs and plants, mulch well, water religiously almost every day for the first whole season, then continue to manage carefully as time goes by. It ain't easy.
There is an alternative that I would recommend to you. Let low-growing flowering weeds into your lawn... that is, no more weed-n-feed or preen or any other kind of herbicide whatsoever. Overseed some clovers. Look aroudn and see what else grows and flowers well in peoples' lawns in your area, and try to get some of that if you don't have it already. Around here, good candidates are cow-vetch, bugle, hawkweed, chicory (despite mowing, it often flowers, albeit at ground level, as do daisies) and heaven help me for saying this but also bindweed (I am not sure I'm recommending such a thing, but it *do* have purty flowers
) Dandelions are, of course, lovely flowering lawn plants The great thing about lawn weeds is that they are VERY good at establishing themselves
And you can still mow your lawn.Just a thought,
Pat
