Winning against the docks!

As the wildflower meadow is due to be cut early next week (several days of good weather are forecast for haymaking) I have been going round and cutting the seed heads off from all of the docks that survived my Roundup Gel earlier in the year. There are so many fewer this year, so a job that in the past has taken two days only took me an hour.

It is very satisfying to see how many dock seeds I am preventing from hitting the ground - I often think that one dock head is like a packet of seeds! As I have been doing this for nearly 10 years just think of the number of seeds that are now not in the meadow.

The early summer flowering plants have now set seed so it is really time for the hay to be cut.

This year I am going to 'top off' the meadow a couple of times during the late summer and autumn to try and reduce some of the coarser grass which is taking over in part of the field.