OT Ping Chris Hogg - Wildflowers

Earlier this year I put a box of these seeds down in my front garden.

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Top row, Country Garden.

The results were quite spectacular, for a change. The lady next door tells me that they are wildflowers and will come back bigger and better next year. What do you think?

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire
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Nope - they're all annuals, come October they will all be dead if sown in March. Broadly speaking, if you want every year, you need to plant bulbs.

Reply to
Simon Mason

That is what the lady next door is telling me. She says that she used to work in a garden center, but she and the rest of her family are rather odd.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

Just leave the flowers to die down and sprinkle the seed head around. Next year you will have an even better patch of "weeds".

Reply to
Chud

Difficult to give a definite answer. The Gplants web site doesn't say whether they're annuals (i.e. only grow and flower for one season) or perennials (i.e. die back in autumn but the roots stay alive and shoot again next year). The annuals will only come back if you allow the flowers to set seed, and the seed to fall on the soil when they've ripened and dried. But yes, the perennials, if there are any, will come back next year.

I suggest you don't dig/pull anything up, but let everything die back, as it all will eventually in the autumn, leave the dead growth where it is for a couple of weeks, then shear it off at ground level with ordinary garden shears, giving the trimmings a good shake over the soil to make sure you've shaken out any loose seed, before burning/composting/binning the stalks.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

Thanks for that. I think that I will play safe, pull them all out and shove some new seeds in next year.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

See my reply to Mr Hogg. Weeds, yes. But if you had seen these weeds you would have been impressed. People walking past stooped and admired them, they really were nice.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

Oh, thanks to all that replied.

For less than 3 quid I'll play safe.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

You may find you have introduced hitherto unknown weeds into your garden. Some "wildflowers" are hard to get rid of. Usually the nasty ugly looking ones. By sods law.

Reply to
harry

Same with hoss muck - I had to chuck in an allotment due to bindweed.

Reply to
Simon Mason

Nothing which flowers is ugly.

Reply to
James Wilkinson Sword

Bindweed is easily fixed with Roundup.

Reply to
harry

Nettles. Docks.

Reply to
harry

We spent two years trying that - the buggers thrive on it.

Reply to
Simon Mason

They aren't really flowers.

Reply to
James Wilkinson Sword

Boiling water kills anything.

Reply to
James Wilkinson Sword

It kills top growth, but not deep rooted weeds like docks, dandelions or bindweed.

I find the simplest and most relaxed way to deal with bindweed is just to pull it and pull it. If you keep at it, over a few years, it eventually gives up. Another method is to unwind the long stems and immerse them in a jam-jar of glyphosate solution of normal strength, and leave them there for a week or so. If you do it at this time of year when the bindweed is beginning to draw nourishment back down from the leaves and into the roots, it takes the glyphosate with it and the root dies. Or so I've been told!

Reply to
Chris Hogg

I've found weedkillers don't kill it completely either, but boiling water will kill the whole thing 90% of the time if you use enough of it.

Reply to
James Wilkinson Sword

Of course they are.

Reply to
harry

Nettles are great for attracting butterflies as well.

Reply to
Bod

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