u/FrostyM89

I posted last week with a question on how to sow wildflowers on an area of rough grass, reeds and nettles. I settled on covering the area with plastic to kill all the vegetation without weedkiller. I got a 120ft x 60ft silage cover from my local co-op. Cut it into 4 strips to cover between the rows of trees.

I have a load of rubber flooring tiles from a playground that was getting upgraded, so I'll spread those around to weigh down the plastic. I plan to leave the covers on til next spring. Then I'll rotovate the soil and plant my wildflower seeds.

The plastic is pretty heavy duty so hopefully I'll be able to reuse it for other areas of the garden I'm hoping to turn into vegetable plots and the likes.

I got a good few responses so I said I'd post an update here to let people know what I have done. I'll probably post an update in the spring when I rotovate and get the seeds in

This winter I planted a 36 tree orchard. The land currently has a mix of rushes, grasses and some pretty thick patches of nettles. I had hoped to put down some wildflowers under the trees. The area is about 20m x 30m.

I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on getting the ground ready wildflower seed. I didn't realise the nettles were as bad as they are. If I strim the area every couple of weeks this year would it weaken the weeds enough to kill them off and rotovate and sow seed next spring?

I was looking at ground cover options to kill off the vegetation, but at 600m2 it gets very expensive very quickly. I could maybe afford some cheap weed membrane to cover for the year but I'd be worried about getting it back up again. Cardboard would be difficult to get in a large nought quantity and to keep in place in a windy area. I'd prefer not to use weedkiller as I am growing food in the soil.

Any advice is welcome, thanks for reading