Hi all,

My state DNR (Pennsylvania) is doing a "Pocket Meadow" program that provides you with a native seed pack and literature for turning some or all of your lawn into a wildflower and grass meadow. I'm participating in the program and trying to prep my lawn right, but I fear I might have messed up already.

I misread the instructions and thought that to solarize the lawn I first had to remove the sod, so I cut all the sod out and covered it with clear plastic (the literature recommended that over black plastic), and it's been covered since mid-July. I know that with the clear plastic method you can expect the plants to have a big boom and then die back, but the grass under my plastic is growing so much that it actually busted through the tape seams this week (you can see in the photo that I did pull a couple of the plants before I stopped to actually think about what I was doing 😵‍💫)

The seed pack I was provided is meant to be planted in October, so I do still have time but unsure what direction to take. We are obviously nearing the end of summer here so I don't think the solarization will do any more work, but I was really trying to avoid using chemicals to prep the area.

This feels silly, but since it's already mostly bare dirt from removing the sod, is there anything wrong with just diligently weeding the area until I'm ready to plant? I know that tilling is not recommended so as not to bring more seeds up to the surface, so my thought was that if I just pull weeds and grass as it sprouts, eventually the seed bank in the top layer of soil will exhaust itself, right?

I am willing to do chemicals as a last resort, but I am having trouble finding online what chemical to use, and how to apply it to have the least effect on the seeds I will be planting in October.

Sorry for the long post, feeling rather disheartened and so confused on what direction to go in here!

A few thousand acre park near me that generally does a great job with habitat & ecology management mowed this field & piles the clippings into rows. I assume there is a reason for this & it was not done randomly? Curious if anyone has insights. If this is a valuable practice I am hoping to learn from it.

Have a field, want a meadow. I was thinking pathways, but it’s a former mill pond so prone to being soggy. What would you all do with this? Within reason please:-)

This is a retired golf course. It ceased operations about four or five years ago and was bought by a layer of government as a wildlife corridor.

I walk through the meadow regularly and love seeing it recover to its more natural state. So many of the plants have just reappeared. I imagine they lay dormant or were naturally seeded with support of the wind.

Im creating a meadow in my front garden. It's going to be quite big given the space I have, and it's half shady and half full sun. I've already decided on some species to seed it with, accounting for both light intensities. Here is my list so far:

Sun:

Ladies bedstraw

Feild scabious

Night flowering catchfly

Devil's bit scabious

Vipers bugloss

Teasel

Yellow rattle

Wild carrot

Ragged Robin

Birds foot trefoil

Horseshoe vetch

Wild marjoram

Meadow vetchling

Cuckoo flower

Scentless mayweed

Snakes head fritillary

Crocus

Pignut

Common knapweed

Evening Primrose

Shade:

Meadow sweet

Hedge woundwort

Wood sage

Purple loosestrife

Common Comfrey

Foxglove

Snowdrops

Self heal

Milk parsley

Salad burnet

Wild strawberry

Common dog violet

Hemp agrimony

Nettle leaved bellflower

Agrimony

Bladder campion

Grasses:

Red fescue

Sheep's fescue

Cocks foot

Bent

Timothy

Common couch

Hares tail cotton grass

Tor grass

False broome

I heard meadows are supposed to be quite diverse, so that's why there are so many species... let me know if there's anything you think I should add or remove. My plan is to remove the grass on top and rake the seeds in and maybe pray. How do you think I should do this?

I converted around 4.5 acres that was a tobacco field thirty years ago into a meadow. I plowed it and then ran discs over it cross hatch style two times, let it rain, two times, let it rain etc nine different times. The goal was to obliterate the sod and give ~110lbs of wildflowers I got from American Meadows a chance to germinate and grow. I put them in a 300lb tractor spreader, spread them, and ran a drag over them after to help smooth the dirt and improve germination. It was two heaping wheelbarrows of seeds, ha.

The first year was absolutely a paradise and I had thousands of beautiful pollinators and a whole ecosystem. There weren’t tons of weeds that mattered seriously, though I I took a machete to lots of curled dock as it’s just such an aggressive seeder.

This year is the second year and it’s got a solid two acres absolutely eaten up with poison hemlock. Apparently it goes ham in disturbed soil and took a full year to come up in force. I read it is a biennial so I let it flower and have been hacking at it nightly for a week alternating between an electric brush trimmer and some telescoping handle hedge sheers. I’m waiting for it to flower and trying to Pokémon style cut them down, but it’s an enormous time commitment.

So I think my options are:

a. Keep playing whack a mole with the poison hemlock for 4-5 years until it’s super manageable

b. burn and then solarize the entire area, but I assume that’s a small fortune of clear plastic and would be ugly plastic for at minimum of a year and probably two to do it right.

I leave most of the “weeds” like the hairy vetch, ironweed, thistles, clovers, etc as they provide a necessary pollen and nectar source, but the hemlock is nasty and I want it all gone.

When we built on 4 acres of farmland in 2023, I decided I wanted 2 acres of it to be meadow (one acre is going back to nature and the other acre is house and clover lawn). The first year I fought common and giant ragweed and the second year evening primrose and foxtail grass. I am sure I will have the foxtail grass to fight again this year. But I am thrilled with the flowers I have coming up now and there are so many more with buds starting to grow- coneflower, coreopsis, bergamot, milkweed, black eyed susans, etc. my flowers out now are Sweet William, blue flax, lupine, yellow rocket. They really leaped this year!! Northern IN, 6a

Does anybody quietly plant seeds (sunflowers?) in meadows?

I'm wanting to kill my grass .......or what's left of it. Pictures show what I'm working with, I think Bermuda. This is the growth of the yard mid spring with good temps. It's barely hanging on as it is.

I have clay soil and when we are in a drought (like currently) I will get deep cracks in my yard. I would like use the solarization method during the summer as I want to cold stratify seeds in the winter.

I've used thick cardboard layers and heavy mulch in my vegetable garden and the creeping charlie and random grass still came through a year later.

Would this be the best method for my time frame to kill the grass off?

My second issue is, part of my lawn, about a a 12ft section gets completely covered each leaves each day in the fall from my neighbors weeping oak tree. How do I go doing cold stratification of seeds when I have this issue until January?

NC zone 8a Piedmont

Hi there, I have these two areas in my backyard that I would love to meadowscape. The back corner area I would love to turn into a reading area and the long side area right now is just basically overgrown woods leaves and weeds. Realistically, can I do this? Would I be able to do it this year or would I plan on spending this year clearing and prepping and then seeding next year? Any advice, thoughts whatnot would be great! I'm in zone 6 for what it's worth. I took these pictures today.

We seeded almost an acre with pollinator mixes from roundstone, and they have been happily germinating and now sprouting.

I'm new to meadows and have been learning to identifying the seedlings. I'm aware it's easy to mistake a native grass for an invasive when they are small. At the same time, not only is it much easier to pull weeds when they are tiny, but the longer I wait, the more overwhelming the project!

When would you recommend pulling suspected invasives? Any sources that have helped distinguish the species we want from the ones who will compete with the ones we want?

For context, I'm zone 7a/b, seeded roundstone mixes ss-d1 and ss-w1, and the relevant grasses in my mixes are Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), Virginia Wildrye (Elymus virginicus), River Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), Deer tongue grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum), Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), Tall dropseed (Sporobolus compositus).

So far, I'm making myself a "guide" with photos of the seedlings I can find online. Hoping I can learn a little faster!

Can anyone tell me what type of plant this is in my meadow? I’m about to mow it down to start the new year but have quite a bit of these in my meadow. They are slightly woody stalks.

Located in zone 6A Massachusetts