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Broadcasting my woes on broadcast sowing

Posted by Catharine on June 1st 2013
If anyone can give me some sound advice on how to sow this way for a perfect even sward - please send me a message. Back flooded into my mind fluttered a scary day at college when, under exam conditions, we had to sow a patch with lawn seed.  It involved the kitchen scales, measuring out amounts - all very precise.  Then by eye working out the area of ground and a division of amount of seed per square metre.  Seed portions worked out, we were to sow into our well prepared ground in one direction and then across it.  Finishing up with a light raking and watering well. So now for real, I did this here at home.  My patch of ground is about 35 square metres and I hoped to conjure a flowering mead of Phacelia tanacetifolia to attract pollinating insects and look the part this summer.  To be followed by  twofold action in the autumn -   turning  the crop back in to improve soil fertility and  a further chance fora swipe at the pernicious weeds that live in that corner. But how actually to broadcast seed?  I’m sure had winnowed the miniscule seeds through my fingers in even manner.  Clearly this is not so for up have come tufty clumps and bare bits 50:50.  The bare bits I have raked out and resown but also blitzed it with 3 wildflower seed bombs and scattered  all my out of date annual seeds packets - larkspur, Ammi majus, prince of india marigolds - even zinnias.  Oh and dwarf beans left over from the allotment today. Fingers crossed for the floral cornucopia.  But how should I have done it?  Neil, an old hand,  told me yesterday to flutter my fingers like a butterfly with a damaged wing  and  practice first with sand.    I have tried and now sown a new patch of lawn.  The knack eludes me.  Help,  let me know if you know better.
Broadcasting my woes on broadcast sowing