Sowing seed in Scrubditch
An important meadow restoration today with the Glorious Grasslands project. It was an 11ha site and we had 200kg of wildflower seed to sow. This is a major part of a biodiversity net gain project for a road construction in Gloucestershire.
The land is under a thirty year stewardship agreement as part of the scheme, so the work we do today will be there for many decades. When we arrived, the site had been beautifully prepared. The grass was cut short, removed and lightly harrowed to expose the soil.
I took the top field with Harvey. The seed bags are first set out 55m apart along the middle of the field. This ensures that you get a nice spread of the right amount of seed over the field.
I drove the Landrover and Harvey sat on the back throwing the seed onto the field.
It’s a tricky process. You go at around 5mph, and you have to keep in line with your previous tyre marks to make sure you don’t miss anything out, or do a bit twice. But in the field it wasn’t always obvious from the drivers seat so I’d get out every now and again to check the line.
It took us from 9.30am until around 2pm, with breaks and lunch. We then went into the bottom field to help Lorna and the other volunteers complete their field. Luckily we managed to complete before the rains came in.
This field has also been prepared for some single standing trees in various places. This will make a woodland pasture – important for biodiversity, carbon capture and grazing. With climate change, it’ll be even more important in the future for cattle to have shade to stand under in the blistering summers in twenty years.
There was a very interesting ash in the far corner. A stem had very recently fallen from what looked like a veteran ash. Something that you don’t see all that often. The main stem was a hollowed out giant circumference with multiple stems growing out from it.
