Perennial Patch

Description

Weight: approx. 500 grams.

Description: A mix of colourful biennial, perennial, or self seeding legumes and herbs that could make up a perennial border around your vege garden, with or without comfrey in it, to harvest throughout the Summer to mulch your veges, or to leave to flower to attract and feed the insects or both. This range of species creates a prodigious amount of biomass for harvesting. This range of seeds could also be planted in your existing pasture where you graze your house cow etc. and would improve the pasture a lot, build resilience in dry or wet conditions, feed more bees and insects and be beautiful with the yellow, crimson, purple and pink flowers.

Planting Instructions: Plant early Spring and Autumn, into a prepared bed . Plant seed at 1 Tablespoon per 10 sq. m and chop in with a rake, then cover with 70% shade cloth until well established, or scatter seed sparingly in existing pasture that has just been grazed, then put the cows back in again to stamp it into the dirt and move the cows on. It will only perform well if you are practicing Holistic Management or MIG grazing, as it will stay strongest if some flowers go to seed before being eaten and stomped to the ground again. You could try putting a little seed each day into molasses for the cows to eat, they will also spread it around as they are moved.

Alternatively you could sow seed into the comfrey border in early Spring and cover until established. I cover my comfrey patch with black plastic in August to kill all the grass and weeds. I would plant the seed when that comes off and cover with shade cloth then until established enough so the birds don’t get it all. If I was starting from scratch I would prepare a bed, and plant my Russian comfrey root cuttings at 40cm diagonal spacings in a bed and chop this seed in at 1 Tablespoon per 5 sq. m and cover with shade cloth until everything is well up.