Diary/Calendar

Fields, gardens, churchyards and other green spaces.
Amy
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Diary/Calendar

Post by Amy »

PS Herefordshire Meadows recommended restoration plan gives a month by month year by year action plan
https://www.herefordshiremeadows.org.uk ... ife-HM.pdf

Update: There is a really useful post by Tracy Hamston on 29 July 21 here https://forum.moremeadows.org.uk/viewto ... p=607#p607 with a really useful link to a video covering machinery for smallholdings, and when to cut this and that.

My original post:
Do you think it would be useful to share a diary of maintenance? It might save us time - as in a reminder and a stitch in time.. and there will be different views, different methods to suit different sites.

Just noticed some general advice on weeding from Goren Farm - 3/4 way down their page on yellow rattle: https://www.goren.co.uk/pages/sowing-yellow-rattle-seed

This is what I am doing, as I carry on experimenting:
(Warning - I'm a gardener, so I tend to micromanage and make myself far more work than is necessary. Also - the growing season where I live might be quite different to yours. Your plants might emerge much earlier, your haycut might be much earlier...Your land might be much drier. My land is wet so the ground doesn't dry out until mid July - August, if at all. I don't do all of this every year, I'm updating this post as time passes. There was more time in lockdown. Management is tweaked according to time, and opportunities, and inclination, each year.)

Jan - Feb Splitting and replanting little pieces of primroses and ragged robin which have awakening roots on them.

Jan 23 - Some grass was left long in one particular area, over the winter, because I wanted to watch finches on the knapweed seedheads, and as a result by January, the creeping bent had flattened. For hours, I tried to scarify and rake it up, which was an absolute nightmare. Although I made bare-ish areas and sowed seeds on them, there was no discernible benefit in the following summer. Never again. Memo to self - Either leave the long grass and knapweed seedheads as a chosen habitat for that year, and cut it in the following spring mechanically, or cut it in the preceding autumn.

Spot treating (applying diluted brushwood killer by paint brush on freshly cut stems) some unwanted bramble/elder whilst they are still dormant. Cutting out unwanted marsh thistle rosettes, with an old kitchen knife or a sharp narrow spade.

Late Feb
Burning some moor grass tussock heads by using a gas torch - this just frizzles the dry stems from last year, the wet base tumps remain unaffected.
Flail mowing/strimming and clearing those areas of flower stems and grass litter left standing till now.
During a dry period, the flail mower was also run over shorter grassed areas as it saves labour by picking up some of the pony manure left from a month or more ago, and it picks up some tree leaves. These go onto the mulch heap of meadow cuttings from last year, to end up on the garden.
Clearing some of the wood club-rush litter, but not too much as it shelters the frogs from the buzzards (will clear most of the rest after the frog spawn season). Cutting shorter some grass where orchids usually emerge.
Digging out docks when there has been a frost to dry the soil.

March - in a very wet period - pulling off some new growth sprouts of ragged robin, keeping a length of last year's stem on them, and pressing them well into other wet patches. Planting the last bare root saplings.

Hand raking up some of the cut and uncut rush litter, and some of last year's wood club rush, tufted and other grass which are beginning to rot in the bog. Pulling out the dried fleabane stems and canary grass stems, which are now loose, and easier to clear now, rather than by strimming in late autumn. Frogs and toads are sitting in the base of the dense wet undergrowth clumps - the rake doesn't pull out wet growth, only the top drier layers, so I believe they are relatively safe.

Mar - July Propagating - leaf cuttings of cuckoo flower, divisions of king cup, dividing or taking cuttings of yellow deadnettle, purple loose strife, fleabane, ragged robin, violets, and marsh woundwort, pricking out seedlings sown last autumn in trays. Planting out remaining plugs if the soil is not too dry (better done in Sept if that area of ground dries out in summer). Transplanting any useful border weed seedlings eg wild foxglove, yarrow, self heal onto any appropriate bare patches in the garden meadow or around its edges to reduce the chance of dock seedlings germinating there.

Middle of May - Dock seedling patrol - removing seedlings from bare earth now to try to limit the nightmare of digging them out later. Cutting back some of the nettles in sunny patches to half height to provide fresh growth for butterflies to lay their eggs on.

Pulling and cutting some of the hemlock water drop wort in the bog where it threatens to spread rampantly, leaving it along the stream where it doesn't do any harm and horses can't reach it, except where it threatens to clog up the water flow. Much easier to do this before the plant grows tall.

May - July 2022 and 2023 2 large horses grazed for 2 months. The first year they ate a bank of clover and vetches hard down to literal bare earth. It didn't flower at all, and didn't recover leafy growth until September. The next year they were excluded from that area and had to graze on a different area of coarser grasses. The vetches survived, and were followed by huge amounts of knapweed. The horses do graze on the large expanses of yarrow, the yarrow survives but doesn't flower in this area.

End of May/June = Pulling creeping thistle. Still digging docks where the ground is damp enough. Deadheading docks elsewhere. Spraying some. (2022 note - I have given up spraying the docks for now, it doesn't always kill them, and I'm trying to dig them up instead - I am trying to keep the ground where they usually grow, covered so there 's no bare earth, for new ones to germinate - not entirely convinced this will work.)

Pulling out spanish bluebell hybrids, where I can get at them in the hedgerow.

Watching damselflies.

(2021) Experimentally patch-strimming cocksfoot and purple moor grass to weaken them and stop seeding, and wood club-rush to weaken it, as they are spreading where they are not wanted, and the flowers make the cocksfoot easy to find now. (Still keeping plenty in other places.) Update: Gardenorganic refer to conflicting studies on the management of cocksfoot.... one says cut in autumn not spring, another says cutting in verges helps it, but so does undergrazing....
https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/sites/ ... merata.pdf.
and there are loads of Natural England online docs saying purple moor grass is unaffected by grazing or cutting.....hmm.. 2022 these areas helped by grazing. Much less work. Small areas where moor grass was spot sprayed because it was spreading rampantly, are recolonising naturally with tormentil and meadow sweet.

Have been advised that if you do choose to paint bramble with weedkiller, it is very effective to paint the young leaves now.

Marking orchids and ragged robin with yellow electric fence posts, so I don't accidentally mow paths over the seed heads.

Keeping a photographic diary of flowers, insects and bees seen each month to cheer my winter days.

(2022 note) Mid - late June - Hay cut of areas where the devil's bit scabious, marsh woundwort and sneezewort grow (avoiding orchid seed heads). This gets the grass shorter for when they flower in Sept, otherwise they become smothered at that time. PS = this did not work well due to the 2022 late summer drought, but next year I will try again, cutting those areas in early June.

Visiting meadows!

End June - Devil's bit scabious seedlings just coming through, sown in a tray last autumn and left outside.

July There is an area of north facing damp permanent pasture, lightly shaded by mature trees to the south, where nothing but grass, stichwort, and creeping buttercup seemed to want to grow. I scattered many many seedheads of knapweed and devil's bit scabious there, on molehills, poached places and other bare areas, for several years, until I gave up about 2 years ago, despondent and thoroughly cheesed off with this area. In 2023, young plants of knapweed have appeared en masse, accompanied by an occasional scabious.

End July = collecting seeds of common valerian, common cats ear, bush vetch and meadow vetchling from the local hedgerow and own site, and treading into bare earth patches. Continuing to remove dock seedlings, and to deadhead some marsh thistle, hogweed, docks and nettles, and to pull creeping thistle, ash and willow seedlings. (Wish I'd topped rampant cocksfoot and sharp flowered rush in June.) Cutting back long bramble shoots where they get in the way.

Visiting more meadows. Great butterfly count. Watching dragonflies.
Making time to sit still amongst the flowers, to listen, and to watch who visits which flower.

August - as above.. plus = dropping cut stems of loosestrife into water beside the plant - it will put out roots with no further attention - will retrieve it and plant it where I want it in Sept. Shaking common figwort and wild foxglove seed heads around.

Visiting DWT culm reserve.

Mid - late Sept
(2021) haycut.
'Rescuing' some precious seedheads from the areas about to be cut eg devils bit scabious, orchids, and shaking them about in appropriate areas afterwards. This is addictive and makes this month, one of my favourite in the year.
Collecting the seeds of bitter vetch, bush vetch, tufted vetch, yellow toadflax and meadow vetchling from the hedgerows, and scattering them about in the meadow. Another addiction.

For the first time in several years, (2023), the meadow cuttings 'compost' spread over the garden in the spring, (which has always been marvellous for soil improvement and the reduction of work by minimising the germination of grass and willow herb seedlings,) this year, it has resulted in fleabane, yarrow, meadow vetchling, and knapweed plants growing in the flower borders. I left them in the appropriately coloured flower borders, to flower over the summer, and will leave the knapweed and yarrow, will now move the fleabane out elsewhere as it is threatening to spread vigorously. I'm leaving the meadow vetchling in a 'hot' coloured border where it joins dandelion, nipplewort and wood avens.
A plant of sneezewort (achillea ptarmica), was deliberately planted in the garden border this year. I took a cutting last year from a meadow plant. It has proved to be very attractive and well behaved.
Plants of pink campion, and later on, of hedge parsley appeared and flowered most attractively in the mulch under an apple tree this year, and I am spreading the seeds around.

The garden lawn is adjacent to the meadow - and I have masses of knapweed, yarrow, yorkshire fog, some kind of catsear, self heal and clover spreading in the lawn. The clover and selfheal are fantastic for bees during 'no mow/occasional mow' May, June and July, and I love and encourage them. The knapweed and yarrow don't flower because they are mown off in mid summer, so they should be moved in September, but it is too much work and I tell myself that probably something eats the leaves. I do regret the yorkshire fog.

I happen to have some bare areas of soil in the fields (bare from light exclusion by machinery and similar) and have resisted sowing new grass there, to see what will naturally germinate. Early colonisers are ribwort plantain, sow thistle, knapweed, creeping buttercup, and yarrow.

October (2022) haycut I rescued ie cut and hand collected the most precious remaining seedheads first. The grass has flattened, but the flail mower cuts and picks it up well. There is far less to cut and far less work thanks to the horses' visit in early summer. Cutting at this time, did mean that the grass did not regrow afresh in time for the Exmoor ponies who came in late November, so they ate the grass down hard and poached the ground more, until they left in late January. This may have resulted in the amazingly huge crop of ribwort plantain in '23, which is good for all sorts of insects, and actually, very attractive.

Will try different method of cutting in sections right throughout the dry season next year.

Sept-thro' winter
Keeping an eye on brambles which seem to elongate 3' overnight, cutting those about to tip root where I don't want them. Monitoring unwanted suckers from dogwood and blackthorn and digging them out where possible - cutting and applying brushwood killer to the freshly cut wound on the dormant stem where it is impossible to dig out the sucker. (It is best to chop through the sucker first if possible, severing it from its parent, otherwise the poison might be carried up to the main plant.)
Renewing brash piles placed to prevent the deer jumping through into the field in certain places where the poaching would give light to dock seeds for germination.

Planting bare root alder buckthorn for the brimstones.

Late November to mid January - 2 Exmoor ponies graze. Not ideal timing, because the land is so wet, with standing water in many areas, but it is the only time I can borrow them and their hooves are very small, so the poaching is minimal. They eat the grass down very hard, and it doesn't recover until at least mid May, giving space, I think, for the spring and early flowers. The ponies pull out some of the thatch from uncut areas, though they prefer the shorter regrowth from the haycut area. They ignore the dead litter from any uncut cocksfoot and molinia, and just trample it.

Dropping this year's purple loose strife stems with the mature seed heads still attached, onto wet boggy areas where the water stands on the surface. (Loose strife seeds spread by floating on water.) I did this last year, with no apparent result, but I keep the faith.

Digging out docks which have appeared over summer. This can only really be done when the soil is not waterlogged, because of the ensuing muddy mess. I insert some of the old root-bearing stems of water mint which remain from the summer, into the muddy mess left behind by the digging, to try to beat any dock seedlings in the race to germinate. Where the ground is drier, I sprinkle the odd yellow rattle seed onto the bare earth, and tread it in, again to beat the docks.

2022 In the garden meadow, (NB - the following is Not worth doing!) In January, I had found some forgotten rattle seed, so I placed old carpet on the grass to block out the light, to stop the grass from growing over the winter in those patches. I put the forgotten yellow rattle seed in the fridge in early January with some moist perlite. In February I scattered the rattle seed and any other left over seed onto the bare patches and trod it in. This was really not worth all the work! I honestly can't tell if this worked or not in most of the places, it did work in a just a few, but rattle seed is expensive so I didn't want to waste it. Note: remember to sow the rattle seed in the autumn!

Toadstool rings in Sept/Oct have caused the grass to grow long, and rich in a rich deep green, in Dec. Will cut these when it is dry. Will try to keep the grass short where it is adjacent to any newly seeded areas, to stop it swamping the seedlings.

**What are you doing right now?? Anyone? Please chip in, as I'm hoping to learn from you and it would be interesting to know what you're doing now..
Last edited by Amy on Tue Sep 26, 2023 10:00 am, edited 56 times in total.
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Steve Pollard
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Re: Calendar of work

Post by Steve Pollard »

Amy - my meadow management is much more hands off than yours (read inferior). Because May is such a glorious explosion of life, when I have time to be in my meadows I am mostly just trying to enjoy seeing what's happening - there are so many more boring months when chores can be done! But, yes, I have more than my fair share of docks, and May is (unfortunately) the perfect time to do battle with them.
Amy
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:09 pm
Location: North Devon
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Re: Calendar of work

Post by Amy »

Ah, Steve, what joys await you - when you are ancient, you will have so much more time to dig out docks. :? 8-) Ah, I forgot, farmers don't always retire, do they.

Just found marsh woundwort coming through 6 weeks early, and knapweed rushing to flower bud when it normally flowers mid to end July here. Breaking off the woundwort stems and pushing into the mud to spread it as it is a magnet for solitary bees and common carders, and I love it.
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