Watch This Space

This is my field of dreams. It doesn’t look much, but I have great hopes for it. I’m hoping to have the whole area blooming. The space is about eleven metres long and varies between two and a half and four metres wide. The shady part gets the morning sun.

I began last autumn by spraying weeds and grass. During the winter I raked it many times to clear most of the wood chips, sticks and dead vegetation. There is no soil to speak of so I saw no point in trying to till it. Then I treated the area with a wetting agent twice and gave it a good soak.

Well into spring I roughed it up a bit with the rake and scattered several packets of seeds. So far the results have been disappointing. Most of the flower plants that have come up are poppies that would have come up anyway. I put a whole packet of dry loving flowers along the fence and nothing has shown up there yet. I intend sowing a lot more seeds. Mostly I’ve sown shirley poppies, California poppies and pot marigolds.

Regular watering has brought up thousands of weeds. I spend 20 to 30 minutes every dry day working on them. I have to leave them until they are big enough for a positive identification. They are mostly grass, henbit, mustard and sowthistle.