Filling free areas in the front garden or on graves with decorative ground cover is a practical and little-work-requiring thing. If you want to save money on the starter culture, you can also sow instead of planting.
Which ground cover plants are suitable for sowing?
Ground cover plants such as scented stonewort, common germander, felty hornwort, morning glory, yellow sedum, bald marshwort and creeping soapwort are well suited for sowing in poor soil and are less susceptible to root weeds. After the first sowing, they can easily sow themselves again.
Sowing ground cover instead of planting
In order to cover an area with ground cover, it is generally recommended to plant fully trained plants. This certainly makes sense in some cases. Especially if the area to be planted is heavily influenced by weed growth and unfavorable soil conditions. Such conditions can make it difficult for the ground cover plant to establish itself. Especially those varieties that are not vigorous and spread less aggressively than some competing root weeds do not find it easy to conquer their area.
Planting out is a somewhat more promising method for ground cover crops, but it also has disadvantages. On the one hand, it is more labor-intensive - after all, the soil must be carefully prepared, cleared of weeds and, depending on the condition of the soil, improved with compost and sand. On the other hand, buying ground cover plants by the meter - of course depending on the size of the area to be planted - can be quite expensive compared to seeds. Under certain circumstances you can save yourself this effort.
These circumstances should be a requirement:
- Soil area to be closed should not be too predefined (no small plots between other plants in the bed)
- Soil should not be too contaminated with root weeds
- Ground cover variety should be rather vigorous
Which varieties are suitable for sowing
Many ground cover plants that like poor soil can be sown well. Areas that are less infested by stubborn root weeds such as groundweed or couch grass are more suitable for this anyway. Ground cover plants that are good for sowing are, for example:
- Scented stonewort/sea silverweed – very fast-growing
- Real germander – forms runners, for heath gardens
- Felty hornwort – fast growing, for rock gardens
- Morning glory – spreads quickly, blooms decoratively
- Yellow stonecrop – very robust, for rock gardens
- Bald herb – fast growing, wintergreen
- Creeping soapwort – very fast-growing, for greening embankments
Many annual ground covers also have the advantage that they can easily re-seed themselves. So if you want to permanently decorate a strip of wall or an embankment with it, you usually no longer need to worry about it after the first sowing.
