This year I have finally caved in and we are trying some cultivated margins to see if we have any rare arable plants on a couple of headlands on the top of the hill. The area totalling about 0.77Ha has been ploughed, cultivated and rolled. We have just missed out planting the spring barley seeds and putting any seedbed fertiliser on those areas.
We are hoping to encourage all kinds of plants rare to Worcestershire that like the thin brash soil over lime stone which will inheritably have a high ph. Plants that we might expect to see will be poppies, some rare ones (Rough Poppy and Long-headed Poppy and lots of red British Poppies. there could be some Lamb's Lettuce, Venus's Looking Glass and Night-flowering Catchfly.
John Clarke who help us with our arable bird monitoring wee be on hand to help determine what we have managed to cultivate later in the summer. Maybe from may onwards we will have some interesting things to see. If this trial is successful and we don't get swamped with weeds that are not too rare ;Charlock,Cleavers and Brome grasses then we might put this option into our up and coming Higher level Stewardship Scheme. In the mean time please do not walk all over the margin, it is not an excuse to walk on a wider bridle path and please keep all dogs off this area as well, as in time it will provide pollen and nectar for insect which will in turn provide food for young chicks.
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