Flower Patch Ground Cover Had Unintended Consequence
Hey guys welcome back to wood street Farm i’m phil and today i’m going to Share with you just an observation about Using the ground cover this is our first Time using the plastic ground cover in Our flower patch and i kind of Discovered a An unintended benefit of using ground Cover i wanted to share with you and Like i said just my observation i don’t Know if this is to be expected in any Planting situation but it’s just Something that we observed but before i Get into that let me give you kind of a Quick little update on the flower patch Here and i’ll show you around show you What we’ve got planted show you what’s Coming up and then i’ll show you the Ground cover So i just got done planting another Succession of sunflowers these were all Pro cut sunflowers and what i did was Tilled these rows like i’ve done before With a three foot tiller behind the Tractor i spread some fertilizer Directly on those rows and rake that Fertilizer in Then i marked off a couple rows with a Hoe where i’m going to drop the seed and Then just manually drop the seed every Six to eight inches or so or maybe eight To ten inches i’m not super precise in How i drop it i just want to make sure i Don’t have a bunch of flowers really
Close to each other so did that all up And down the row part way up the row i Did mark off a line across the row Because part of this row is going to be The pro cut lemon and part of these rows Are going to be pro cut orange and i Want to make sure i have you know blooms For each so rather than doing full Dedicated rows once this fills in Will look like we have like a little Block of orange a little block of lemon With six planted rows of each for the Succession So as we look around the flower patch it You know doesn’t look like a whole lot Yet and actually kind of looks a little Bit messy because we’ve got some of our Cover crop that wasn’t completely killed Off that wasn’t completely tilled in It’s popping back up so there’s a little Bit of buckwheat here in the middle of Nowhere there’s a whole bunch of Buckwheat over there but we’re going to Knock that down soon there’s going to be Some more sunflowers going on those Fresh tilled rose right there but we’re Gonna do that in a couple days so how This is looking here i’ve got Two Hundred plus foot rows of mammoths right Here at the back of the patch most of The people are gonna be coming in down That way and they’ll be kind of looking Uphill so kind of anchoring the the back
Of the patch or the top of the patch With these mammoth sunflowers which Could get upwards of eight or ten feet Tall next we’ve got a mix of autumn Beauty and crazy mix we had we bought Both of those seeds last year and the Flowers that we liked the most from last Year we ended up saving a bunch of seed And we just mixed it all together and That’s what we planted down this row so There’s a bunch of different flower Sizes coming up in there because it’s a Quite a mix of different flowers some of Those are going to end up being single Stems some of those are going to end up Being branching and they should be a Whole bunch of different colors so That’ll look pretty cool in front of the Mammoths next up here on the patch we Will have uh two chilled rows which Equals four rows because i plant two Rows on each tilled section uh four rows Of pro cuts and we did a staggering mix Over the last couple weeks here of we Did a section of orange a section of Lemon a section orange section lemon so This should look pretty cool going down Here as it starts to fill in With those alternating colors of flowers Just downhill from those rows we’re Actually going to have a large aisle way This will be about 10 feet across Uh what i’ll do just because it’s full Of weeds right now in about another week
Or two i’ll come through with the six Foot tiller and i’ll just set its depth Like really low and we’ll just kind of Scrape the top inch or two Break up all those weeds and then just Before our flower event maybe two weeks Before our flower event We might come through and do that again If there’s a lot of weed pressure again We did this last year it worked really Well and it ended up producing for us a Really clean aisle way that was Relatively weed free so We’re definitely going to try that again As we walk back this way we’ve got All of those the the fresh rose of Sunflowers that i just planted we’ve got A couple other rows of sunflowers that Were planted last week and then we get Into our zinnia and cosmos rows and we Have planted these over the course of The last couple weeks So we’ve got basically these are 60 foot Rows and we split them in half so up Here close to me we’ve got about 30 feet Of zinnias and then we’ve got 30 feet of Cosmos across all of these roads so this Is all going to fill in really really Nice here hopefully And it kind of brings me to what i Wanted to talk to you about in this Video which was the maybe unintended Consequence of using the ground cover so I shared with you on a previous video
That we’re using this for the first time And i shared with you how we kind of set It all up made a template out of wood Used a little propane torch burned all Those holes and then it was kind of a Tedious process to go hole by hole and Drop a seed in every single hole and Actually what we’ve since come back Through and done is anywhere where there Was a seed that didn’t germinate or in Some cases there was um There was a seedling that maybe got Scorched by the heat you know once it Popped out its first inch or two we had Some 90 plus degree days i think that Really toasted some of these because we Found a lot of little tiny dead Seedlings that were just flopped over on Top of the plastic so we’ve had to come Back through drop some fresh seeds in Just to make sure this fills in really Nice but that’s what we’re seeing here And these five Rows here Were planted um Two weeks ago And then the other Five rows this direction were planted Four weeks ago I got the sunflower seeds in the ground Just in time this morning because a Little rain shower coming through that’s Perfect So these are the first cosmos that we
Planted undercover and you can see here Uh these plants you know there’s Different types of cosmos this was a mix So there’s you know different heights in Here but you know this one here is tall It’s over 12 inches the one right next To it is about 10. And you can see the foliage on there is You know it looks healthy it’s deep Green it’s branching out it looks good And just over there you can see the Zinnia row and it looks pretty similar You know everything’s nice and tall and Leafy and green And by comparison though the stuff that We planted in the bare ground is not Nearly as healthy looking even though it Was put in the ground in the exact same Day it was given the same amount of Fertilizer so i don’t know if that’s Just the ground cover that’s helping That or if um you know that soil over There where it is not covered Is a little bit different condition as Well it’s a little bit heavier clay Where over here is a little bit sandier So maybe the plants are just thriving Better in this soil Don’t completely know What’s causing it but i think the ground Cover is probably contributing to it a Little bit Well let me know what you guys think About this if you have experience with
Ground cover and you’ve had an Observation like this before where the Plants are growing better with the Ground cover than they do on the bare Ground you know let me know If this is repeatable if this is to be Expected there’s no reason that i Wouldn’t want to expand our ground Ground cover in future years we only did Two roles this year partially because The rolls are kind of expensive and i Didn’t want to cover the entire patch in It and i didn’t want to make that Investment this year but the other Reason was i just didn’t really know how It’s going to work out for us so this uh You know 600 feet of cover that we have Now I think it is a Great experiment for us and definitely Shows me that we want to do this again Now the benefit of this is that this Ground cover can be used for multiple Years so at the end of the season we’re Going to roll this up and we’ll be able To use it again so all of that prep work That we had to do with measuring out the Segments and burning the holes and all That we won’t have to do again obviously For this first 600 feet of rows we’ll Just have to do that for any additional Ground cover that we get for future Years So on a future video i’m going to share
With you guys some updates on Photographers and you know kind of some Of the pros and cons and lessons learned Of offering our property as a Photography venue You know it’s it’s worked out pretty Well is the short story but i do want to Share some of those uh details with you And uh like i said i’ll do that in a Future video so if you don’t already hit The subscribe button follow us on our Future videos by subscribing if you got Questions or comments about what we did Here obviously leave those below this Video and hope you have a good one i’ll See you on the next one bye-bye [Music] You
