How To Create A Meadow Lawn

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Selection of perennial and annual flowers for meadow lawn

What is a meadow lawn

An important element of the garden area is the lawn. It forms the landscape, creates a favorable microclimate and pleases the eye.

If you wish to host an English queen on your garden plot, then a parterre lawn will suit you. For those wishing to play a game of golf with the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, there is a special lawn.

Authoritative people also need a special lawn. Imagine: all colleagues have a special lawn, but you have an ordinary one … If a ravine passes through the site or is located in a former landfill, then there is a lawn for problem lands.

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If everything is all right with you and you come to the dacha just to relax, then we can advise you to arrange a meadow lawn, the so-called "cultural meadow". You can't even call it a lawn - just a meadow with flowers. Carnations, strawberries, chamomile, irises, poppies, cornflowers, bells will delight you with their pristine beauty.

The advantage of a meadow lawn is that it blooms all year round, its decorative effect is of a natural nature and it is only necessary to help nature a little with cultivated seeds of flowers and grasses. A variety of this type of lawn is the well-known Mauritanian lawn of perennial flowers, to which many annuals are added, and the proportion of cereal plants is minimal. A vivid impression is made by the combination of a parterre meadow with a natural flowering meadow in the depths of the garden and under the trees.

There is a growing interest in wild grass lawns around the world. But to make a good meadow, you have to work a little in the first year. The grass in the meadow does not need to grow very quickly, so the soil does not need to be fertilized (nor does it need to be carefully leveled). Sandy, well-drained soils are best.

Preparing soil and seeds for planting a lawn

Before sowing the area with a flower mixture mixed with grass, its surface must be free of weeds by spraying them with a continuous action herbicide "Tornado" or "Roundup". Then, with a cultivator or manually dig up the site, picking out dead weeds and stones.

On the meadow, bulbous plants are quite appropriate, which are planted in natural groups in small recessed areas before the final planning of the site and sowing the flower mixture, so that it seems as if they are wild-growing flowers. They need to be small in order to look natural, withstand the competition of grasses, and not freeze in winter. When planting, the bulbs are not placed in the correct rows.

On the meadow, you can plant croplands, white flowers, viper onions, camassia, kandyk, daffodils, snowdrops, woodlands, poultry farms, hazel grouses. After planting the bulbs, you can start planting the lawn-flower mixture. Seeds are best sown in autumn, and if not, sow in May. Sow ready-made seed mixtures in accordance with the recommendations on the package, a mixture of herbs and flowers prepared by yourself - at the rate of 30 g per 1 sq. m., where the mixture of flower seeds is at least 3%.

There are ready-made mixes on the market, but you can simply mix seeds of different colors yourself. A mixture of low or high annuals and perennials is thoroughly mixed with low-growing lawn grasses. In any case, the grass mixture should be dominated by bluegrass, fescue and bent grass seeds, and the flower mixture should be dominated by flower seeds that can grow in the conditions of your site.

The purchased flower seeds must be fresh, full-bodied and well-sorted, have high germination and amicable germination energy. In some flower crops (levkoy, mallow, flax and others), seeds have the best germination after 2-3 years of storage. Well-ripened seeds obtained from well-developed plants and stored in a special room retain their high germination capacity for several years.

Before sowing, seeds are treated to decontaminate them, accelerate germination, increase cold resistance, accelerate growth rates and improve plant development. Many diseases of flower crops, especially those caused by fungi (alternaria, fusarium, verticillium wilting, late blight, brown rot, blackleg, septoria, ascochitosis, etc.), are transmitted by seeds. Before sowing or one to two months before sowing, seeds are treated with TMTD (5 g per 1 kg of seeds), fentiuram (4-6 g per 1 kg of seeds) or other dressing agents.

Correct dressing, while observing the consumption rates of the preparations, disinfects seeds, increases their germination and germination energy. Seeds with a hard shell (sweet peas, morning glory, fiery red beans, nasturtium, lupine) are soaked before sowing, dipping them in gauze bags, 1/3 filled, in water. Small and medium seeds are soaked for 6-12 hours, large ones - 24 hours. The water is changed twice a day.

After soaking, the seeds are dried and sown in a greenhouse or open ground, where they germinate quickly. One of the methods of pre-sowing seed preparation is the exposure to variable temperatures. It is applicable for cold-resistant crops (sweet peas, Drummond phlox, aster, levkoy, Shabo cloves, etc.) and is as follows.

The seeds soaked for 12 hours are alternately placed for 12 hours, first in a refrigerator with a temperature of 0 - minus 2 degrees, and then kept at a temperature of 18-20 degrees until germination, the seeds that have nailed are sown immediately without drying. An increase in germination and germination energy is also facilitated by the treatment of summer seeds with solutions of salts of various microelements (Mn, Zn, Mo, Co, etc.). In biennials, boron and zinc increase winter hardiness.

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All annual and biennial flower crops are conventionally divided into three groups in relation to low air temperatures:

- hardy, or cold-resistant (aster annual, acroklinum, gelikhrizum, cornflower, gailardia, carnations, gypsophila, godetia, delphinium, dimofroteka, sweet pea, iberis, clarkia, space, flax, flax, levkoy, lobularia, lupine, poppies, nigella, marigolds, scabiosa, statice, Vitrocca violet, Drummond phlox, chrysanthemum), withstand repeated frosts and in spring they can be sown 2-4 weeks before the last frost. Some of the crops in this group can be sown before winter;

- semi-hardy (ageratum, arctotis, balsams, verbena, lobelia, nasturtium, petunia, sunflower, mignonette, salpiglossis, fragrant tobacco, marigolds, celosia, zinnia) can tolerate occasional light frosts, they are not dangerous to sow on the days of the last frost.

Sowing and care

Seeds are sown in rows or randomly, seeding rates for each crop are recommended. Small seeds are sown without embedding in a mixture with ballast, often with fine sterilized sand, the rest are covered with a layer of soil or sand equal to the diameter of the seed. Unlike other types of lawns, the timing of mowing a meadow is not so strict.

It should be borne in mind that spring-flowering bulbous plants grow on it, and therefore the first time you can mow the grass 6 weeks after the last flower has bloomed, usually at the end of June. If bulbous plants grow on the lawn, then mowing is carried out after their leaves completely die off. When to mow a second time depends on how you envision your meadow and how much time you are willing to spend on it.

If you want your meadow to look like a wild meadow or you are short on time, then one more mow in September is enough. Within a year you will become the happy owner of a small piece of pristine nature in the form of your meadow lawn, which, moreover, will not require special care from you.