It looked as though the sticky weed might be the only plant growing on the patch of ground where I had sown all those seeds. So I put on wellies and my gardening gloves and waded into it. I grabbed handfulls and just pulled it up. It comes away quite easily but it is amazing how much there can be as it grows high and each plant has a lot of stalks. I cleared a few patches, especially around the clumps of vipers bugloss which were still low to the ground with their rosettes of pointed leaves, and the foxgloves.
About a month or so later, in May, one of the Conservators and I walked through the meadow to see what had come up. On the old part (the bit we had not rotavated) was the long grass, common vetch, meadow buttercups, dandelions, clover, stinging nettles, dead nettles, brambles, speedwell, black medick (or possibly trefoil), goats beard and wafts of lacy yarrow. That in itself was looking lovely. In the new bit, all we could see were the foxgloves and bugloss, the thistles and nettles and the acres of sticky weed. So we spent an hour or so pulling it up, again throwing away mounds of it whilst I worried that we would also be pulling up seedlings trying to establish themselves.
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