Sowing my annual flower patch

It is soon time to sow my annual flower patch on the allotment. I do this every year, sometimes quite large areas, other times only a corner of one of my beds. In the first year I used a commercial flower mix which had already various annual flower species mixed together such as corn poppy, cornflower, corn marigold, corncockle, Linum, Cosmidium, Cosmos, californian poppy, Echium and many more. It looked beautiful but doing this every year, especially on a larger area, would be quite expensive. I now mix all the spare seed packets of suitable annual flowers, mainly acquired from garden magazines which often give away flower seeds for free, together to create my own mix. This way my flower patch looks different every year and it is also much cheaper.

Cornflowers, poppies and pot marigold give a colourful picture

This is what a meadow looks like!

Often these annual flower patches are called meadows in garden magazines which annoys me a bit. In the magazines they show how to create meadows in gardens to help wildlife but the pictures almost always show annual flowers such as corn poppies and cornflowers sown in a "meadow-style" which looks very pretty but defeats the purpose in my opinion. True meadows consist of mainly perennial flowers and grasses adapted to grazing and cutting and are now quite rare as the traditional farming practice of hay making does not fit with modern farming which mainly uses silage to feed livestock. Meadows have a lot more value to wildlife than annual flower patches as they provide an important food source, nesting and hiding place for many different invertebrates (for example spiders and insects) and also for larger animals such as amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. I have 2 small meadows on my allotment which I manage by cutting twice a year. More on these in a later blog post.
 

Little mason bee (Osmia sp.) on a corn marigold flower

Annual flowers do exactly what it says in the name, they germinate, grow, flower and set seed in just one year, often just in a few months as with the cornfield annuals which need to finish their life cycle before the farmer harvests the crop. Cornfield annuals such as corn poppies and cornflowers are adapted to ground disturbance and start growing after the field has been ploughed and tilled by the farmer and before the sown crops have established too much. Sadly many of these beautiful cornfield flowers are now rare or even extinct due to changed farming practices and increasing use of herbicides.

An annual flower patch can be in flower from June to September

Small tortoiseshell drinking nectar from a corncockle flower

But luckily we can bring these pretty annual flowers in our gardens and allotments. You need a sunny area with well-drained fertile soil. Some annuals like poor sandy soil but many, including cornfield annuals, grow better in richer soil. It is important to prepare the seedbed properly. I normally use a stale seedbed system which means that I prepare my seedbed well in advance, say beginning of March. I then leave it for at least 3-4 weeks to give the weed seeds time to germinate. If enough weeds have germinated I hoe them off on a dry day. I do this 2 to 3 times and then sow my annual flower seeds. This should have depleted the weed seed bank at the soil surface sufficiently to allow the annual flower seeds to develop without too much competition as it is very difficult to remove weed seedlings after the flower seeds have germinated. If you have weed-free soil already you can sow straight away without using the stale seedbed system.

Californian poppy and pot marigold give a splash of orange

Before sowing the flower seeds I mix them with dry sand so they are easier to distribute and you can see where you have already sown. I sow the seed/sand mix evenly over the surface of the bed (on large areas I divide the space into smaller areas and sow each area separately), rake over the whole bed and finally walk over the whole area to firm the seeds in. This does not work well on wet soil as the ground would be compacted too much by walking over it so it is better to wait until the ground has dried out bit before sowing. If rain is forecast I do not water the seeds in, but in a dry spell I try to water the area every 2 days.

Sowing the seed evenly over the surface

Raking the whole area

Walking over the bed to bring the seeds in contact with the soil

Seeds should germinate after 2-3 weeks. I always find it exciting when the area is slowly changing from brown to green with many tiny seedlings popping up everywhere. Seedlings normally develop fast in warm weather but if there is no rain they will need some watering, every 3 days should be sufficient. The first flowers normally appear in June with a mid-April sowing.

In June the first flowers are appearing

By July the flower patch is looking very colourful

Once the seedlings have developed into young plants I stop watering and just let the flowers get on with it. Many bees, hoverflies and other pollinators will visit the flower patch on fine days so it is not just me who will enjoy it!

A bumblebee is visiting the Echium flowers

Another bumblebee drinking nectar from corn marigold flowers

A tiny solitary bee is hiding between pot marigold petals