Last week I purchased some Yellow Rattle seeds from an excellent Suffolk based nursery called Wildflower Shop, along with some Meadow Clary plug plants. Yellow Rattle is a beautiful plant which is a hemiparasite of grasses and can reduce their vigour to help herbs to flourish in a meadow. I cut the remaining sward to a height of about 40mm, which was surprisingly easy even with a simple hand powered push mower to finish off the rough scythe cut I had already done. I considered using a petrol driven mower, but besides the fact that I hate them, I didn't want all the seeds and invertebrate eggs / larvae to get sucked up in into the mower. Afterwards I raked up the moss which grows prolifically (especially on the dry meadow) and the dry thatch in the damp(er) meadow. I then sowed about half the Yellow Rattle seed, principally in the damp meadow area and around the Damson tree. I will sow some more seed this week and then the following week, each time giving it a bit of a rake and firming it in by foot.
I got a huge mound of moss from the meadow:
I am soaking this in a bucket of water to use as bedding for my worm farm. Makes me wonder whether I could make a peatbog however... hmmm...
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