Wildflowers and You

[johnday]

Anyone have a wildflower garden, or even acreage planted with them?
I've got about an acre cleared upnorth, where a sawmill once was. Right now, there is pasture type grass on it, along with lots of bracken. It gets full sun, and is sandyloam, all on a slight hill facing west, ringed with forest on all sides. It's a nice quiet area.

I'd like to run my disc over it, and plant a wildflower mix for my area.

Where can I get seed reasonably priced? What should I expect for a final outcome? What's the best way to prep the soil?

Anyone have photos of either what you've done, or someone you know has done?

 

[Glenn9643]

You'll need to determine what's native to your area.
We have a few spots with plantings, but try to keep them restrained to their limited "bed" rather than broadcasting. However, the one's we've selected grow rather large. Orange cosmos is one and it will grow to 7-8' high and spread about that after it starts sprawling. Looks almost like a large shrub in the pasture through the summer, and covered with large bright orange blooms in the fall. It returns from seed every year. Another is "swamp sunflower" and it dies back with the frost but will come back from the roots every spring. It also gets pretty large and blooms in the fall. Other natives to this area are "indian blanket", "mexican hat", and "bird pepper", and they're mixed in with other flower beds here.
I've not tried to broadcast anything like you're thinking of because I have to keep the grass cut to hold down the mosquito population around here.

 

[Melensdad]

John, in addition to the advice from Glenn, bear in mind that many native wildflowers are perennials and may take at least 2 years to make their first blooms and a few years to become well established. That said, if you want flowers the first year you should mix in some native ANNUALS, some of them will reseed themselves and grow back, most will likely die out, but they will serve the purpose of helping to choke out some of the initial weed growth.

Also, many wildflowers don't compete well with grasses so you may (and I hate this suggestion if you would have kids around) want to spray the grass with Round Up or some similar grass/weed killer several days, or perhaps a week prior to disking/tilling the ground.

I had very good luck with yarrow.