Wildflower Meadow - Ten year research into Yellow Rattle
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.พ. 2018
- Fred Lovell sadly passed away in 2016, but thankfully his research was preserved in this video which I filmed and edited back in 2015. His method does not involve the use of chemicals nor scarifying.
A summary of the video.
Gathering the seeds
1. Choosing an area that has low public interference and is protected from the wind will generate the greatest yield.
2. Grip the yellow rattle stem and pull the pods off the plant. Throw the pods into a bucket.
3. Spread the gathered pods onto newspaper and allow two days to dry.
Filtering the Pods
1. You will need 3 buckets and mesh bin for filtering.
2. Place newspaper around your work area.
3. Fill the filter bin 1/3 full with pods, shake the bin so that the seeds fall into the second bin.
4. When the seeds no longer fall, empty the filter bin contents into a third bucket.
5. Repeat the process until you have filtered all the yellow rattle seeds out of the pods.
Sowing Yellow Rattle
1. Cut and clear the ryegrass.
2. August 12th Ideal sowing time.
3. Sow into an established grassland.
4. Stand side by side with volunteers and spread the seed while walking in a line.
5. You must stamp the seed into the ground.
Management and issues to Avoid
1. Do not scarify the ground.
2. Do not trample February onwards.
3. Must be subjected to frost.
4. Cut once between late August up to mid-February
I followed Fred's advice a few years ago and we now have yellow rattle established on our small farm near Newcastle Upon Tyne. Thanks for posting the video. Hope you're in your forever meadow Fred.
I'm so sorry to hear that Fred passed away. His legacy is extremely valuable and will help anyone getting involved in starting wildflower meadows. I have just discovered his important knowledge and will use it to establish my own meadow areas in my garden. Thank you Fred.
What a lovely example of an English gentleman, with a deep interest in nature, I watch him often. Old lamas day, sounds like old England, so simple and soothing.
Lovely, lovely man - highly intelligent and caring. Sadly missed. RIP Fred. Much love, George and Family.
Followed Fred's advice re sowing Yellow Rattle and had great success. Thank you Fred 👍RIP
Just a small update, we may do another video in the future regarding what we've learned. However one of the main things I've learned, is that if you want a good return every year, it's essential you cut the grass one inch or below without scarifying. The time period for sowing doesn't need to be so precise, ensuring people don't trample or cut is yet again essential. Giving the seeds a good stamp into the ground is yet again highly beneficial, I've seen significant density in areas sowed with trampling while areas without have still come up, but not been as anywhere near as dense.
A massive thank you to everyone for the very kind words regarding Fred and his research, it's lovely to hear from different parts of the country and world how his efforts have helped others.
Please do share your experience, we'll be very grateful.
I watched twice now, I so much appreciate the knowledge Fred has passed on to all of us.
Such alovely video and full of the information i was after. Thank you for putting this on show. A born teacher and joy to listen too
Thanks Fred - your passion and advice is being implemented overseas
Sad to hear of Fred's passing. Thank you for posting this video that is by far the best advice I have found on yellow rattle anywhere. I think I was lucky in that I was frankly rather lazy in scarifying the small patches of ground I initially seeded. The rate of increase has been quite amazing. What started as 10 grams spread over a couple of 10 sq.m patches in September 2015 has spread quite thickly over about 1/3 of an acre by this year and I could have harvested a kilo of seed quite easily. The effect on the grass has to be seen to be believed.
Great advice about Rattle i agree got a few rattle in my meadow but still tall silage grass will follow fred advice very imformative RIP Fred and thanks
Great video. I rotovated strips into a 2 acre field and then sowed into that in early Autumn and had a success the following year . I've got lots of yellow rattle setting seed now, 1 year on. The hay cut is due this week, earlier than suggested but I am in the south west and most of the rattle has set seed already. Will be collecting lots now, to be sown after the hay cut. Soon after, a couple of sheep will be in residence, hopefully treading the seeds into the ground for me.
Thanks for this video - the details on collecting it being especially useful :)
When I was a kid, I admired the paintbrush growing in the wet meadows and along the highway. Indian paintbrush is an attractive member of the parasitic Broomrape family (Orobancaceae) that performs a similar function. Merry Holidays!!
Respectfully, I've sown on bar ground and it's had grown perfectly fine, I've sown after August and it has grown fine. So I'm not to sure about his statement about all information about yellow rattle being wrong. Maybe not optimal but not wrong.
Wonderful and informative, thank you.
Thanks Fred 👍
Thank you 👍
Good video
I’ll be a tad late sowing this year but fingers crossed!
sowed mine last year as Fred suggested but not many have appeared yet hope you do better with yours
Fred said: Cut the grass & clear away the rising. What is a rising?
We have plans to try a different method, using an alan scythe mower to cut the grass low, then leaving it for 2 to 4 weeks for the grass to biodegrade. All advice states to rake the grass away when establishing meadows, however I'm curious if this method can be skipped due to the parasitic nature of yellow rattle. Slowly learning that more than anything it is highly important to have very good contact with soil (which seems obvious but it's not) and then rain/moisture on the grassland.
i would like to turn a field near where i live into more of a meadow than the area of rough tussocky
grass it currently is....dense tussocky grass that smothers everything and prevents anything else from moving in and getting started.
i havent the time to do any guerilla gardening involving any digging so i was wondering if you had any suggestion of what i could try? i know that yellow rattle is supposed to be useful, but how easy would it be for their seeds to get through the almost inpenetrable sward and down to the soil?
how easy would it be for yellow rattle to colonize such an area?
is there any other plant seed that would be guaranteed to break the stranglehold this tussocky grass has got? might another way simply be to dump a lot of tree leaves and or other organic twigs stems etc from the garden in piles on top of the tussocks to 'smother the smotherer'! and provide some kind of access point for incoming airborn seeds to get a toehold?
It struggles immensley against dense grass.
@@BoltonNewt Try Fred's other suggestion and sow Red Bartsia seed. It stokes very well in long grass and grows as tall as it needs to to compete with the grasses it is adjacent to. Bartsia is a common weed so you should be able to gather a lot of seed for nothing. It comes up later than Rattle, has very similar leaves but they are not so 'crimped' as rattle and are slightly wider. The flowers are tiny but produce loads of seed.
@@lifesforliving4929 I recall Fred talking about Red Bartsia as a good alternative. If I recall correctly he stated that Red Bartsia was a good alternative for acidic soil where yellow rattle would otherwise struggle. We have some at Leverhulme Park and due it not being as vibrant as yellow rattle you can often not be aware of it being present, however you can see exactly the same results around the areas it's grown with the grass signifcantly stunted. So absolutely, it's a real good alternative to sow.
@@BoltonNewt Thanks for the reply. I showed it on acid ground (New Forest) and it took very successfully, however I got the seed from plants that grew on the chalk plains near Salisbury where it was being used specifically to create a diverse meadow.
Great video, but at 6:30 the presentation suddenly cut at wavelengths and sowing times. Own experiences are the richest informations in gardening. Please share the rest.
Did exactly as Fred advised but sadly hardly any rattle has appeared yet just a few plants can it take up to 2 years to grow ?
Yellow rattle is an annual so after you sowed it, it should have come up by May of next year usually flowering in June.
@@BoltonNewt it did but only a few plants appeared sadly not knocking fred maybe i did something wrong
@@casper1240 Did you PH your Soil before hand, as he said it prefers slightly a
lkaline conditions?
@@counteldamar5135 Hi yes its mainly alkaline with the odd acidic biy tried again this year see how i get on cheers
As an update to my earlier post, it's interesting that the rattle is significantly less prevalent on the original 1/3 acre into which it was introduced in 2015 with much of the decline being between last year and this. However it is very strong in another area where we introduced it in 2017. Another small area was seeded in 2018 with zero success and again in 2019 with modest success. I suspect that the requirement for frosting of the seeds is a factor in the variability though we did have significant frost last winter so I'm not adamant about that. I am going to try frosting some seeds before sowing - both by soaking them first and doing it to dry seeds to see if I can learn more about this.
I should say that we now have orchids in profusion (broad-leaved marsh we think though there is significant variation in them) which I think has been helped by the rattle so well worth the effort..
Hello, can I sow yellow rattle now n South Devon or am I too late this year?
Still fine to sow, just make sure it has good contact with the soil. Things that would help, trampling it in and moisture/rain.
@@BoltonNewt thank you so much for your quick reply