At Goričko Nature Park we took advantage of the warm end of summer for drying and cleaning the seed mixtures and first nice autumn days for their sowing.

This year’s amount of dry seed mixtures is smaller due to unfavorable weather conditions, although the same area of donor meadows was processed. Unfortunately we obtained less seed mixtures than previous year, we were more successful in the first harvesting and obtained more grass seeds. The brushing of seeds was again carried out by colleagues from the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia. It took six days to collect seeds mixtures from 8.3 ha of meadows.

Than we transported the seed mixtures to the castle Grad, where it was dried and later sifted.  Dry seed mixture was alltogether mixed to obtain a homogeneous seed mixture. This mixture was prepared for sowing in the ratio 20 kg/ha.

This years first day of sowing was a little different. This time we invited the protégés of the Protection and Work Center from Murska Sobota. Before sowing we presented basic project’s activities (restoration of dry meadows, collecting seeds for the seed bank etc…), after which we discussed the agricultural measures that farmers can implement in the current agricultural policy. Silva, Robert, Matej, Roman, Tomaž and Patrik set to work with enthusiasm.

In the blink of an eye, we sowed approximately 2 ha of meadows by hand while enjoying a pleasant chat. We worked in two groups, encouraged each other, joked and shared good will. Unfortunately we had to end early as we were chased away by raindrops. Otherwise, the rain is always welcome for germination of seeds.

The rest of the seed mixtures was sown in the days before the rain by the Goričko Nature Park employees. Altogether 8.3 ha of recipient meadows were sown in four days. In addition to the purified seed mixture, we also sowed debris, in which many seeds of meadow herbs and grasses are still present.