Giving a section of your garden up to grow wildflowers is a great idea and one that is seemingly gaining in popularity all of the time. But when is the best time to sow wildflower seeds? Can you plant wildflower seeds in July? Let’s have a look and find out.
Can I Plant Wildflower Seeds In July?
So while you shouldn’t plant wildflower seeds in July you won’t have to wait long as late august and September make great times to sow wildflowers, depending on the mix you get.
Depending on the mix?
Yes, different mixes of wildflowers need to be sown at different times. It all comes down to what flowers are included in your wildflower mix.
With that said though, the vast majority of wildflower mixes do best from an autumn sowing rather than a spring, so the best time of year for sowing wildflowers is just around the corner.
If you think about it, an autumn sowing makes a lot of sense. We are growing wildflowers here so let’s take our cue from how they would grow in the wild.
The plants would flower in summer and then come autumn the seeds would fall off the plants and be distributed around the soil below.
This is what we are mimicking by sowing in autumn.
How To Sow Wildflowers
The best way to sow wildflowers is in bare soil. Sow the seeds liberally onto the surface and then lightly rake them in before walking over the area to press the seeds into the soil.
With wildflower seeds, you don’t want to plant them too deep which is why I recommend just raking them in.
If you are plating into an existing lawn then you will want to cut the grass really short, to begin with. You then want to remove a lot of the grass.
This is hard work but will be well worth it, if you can get hold of an electric scarifier then it can make the job much easier. Otherwise use a solid rake and plenty of elbow grease.
You can then sow the seeds as above.
If you don’t have plenty of yellow rattle in your mix then you may find that the grass just takes over and chokes out all of your flowers. Yellow rattle is essential to a good wildflower meadow if there is already a lot of grass there.