YELLOW RATTLE (Rhinanthus Minor) / Meadow grass plug

20cm bare-root super-plugs (annual) - see below to understand how this plant is sold and to manage your expectations.

A minimum of 2 Yellow Rattle plants (annual wildflower), grown in a super-plug with up to 5 varieties of native meadow grasses (Bents/Fescues). This grass helps the Yellow Rattle seedlings get strong for sale. The grasses are beautiful in their own right, and help to introduce ' good ' and non-vigorous grasses into your meadow.

Yellow Rattle is parasitic on grass, and it is used to hold back the grass and let neighbouring wildflowers compete.

Our plugs are for adding direct to wildflower meadows / wild areas in Spring, to help to encourage establishment.

If you are planning to sow Rattle more widely, adding these plugs is a great way to boost establishment, even at scale.

When you get your plug(s), the Rattle is the dark green seedling with zig-zag leaves, poking through the companion grasses. It may appear small and underwhelming, but it needs adding to your plot early in it's life cycle, as it is during the initial growth stage where the magic occurs.

YOU MAY NEED TO KEEP ADDING RATTLE PLUGS FOR 2-3 SUCCESSIVE SEASONS, TO GET IT TO TAKE. We promise that this is true, and not some money-making con job! It needs a bit of luck as well as judgement sometimes, and can take a few years to take by itself. It often does poorly after very wet winters, and really well after colder drier ones. On some sites, it might never really like you and there is no clear science at to which sites it prefers!

We are not responsible for this plant being an enigma!

Whilst we have avoided it so far, we still read customer reviews of Yellow Rattle on other websites, in which customers criticise the seller because it didn't 'work' in their meadow. This is not the sellers fault, and it isn't your fault either. You must have an informed and forgiving mindset, and depending on your beliefs you either need to blame Evolution, or the Creator (but not us) if it doesn't work, and stop giving up so easily! 😂😂

It can be one of the most difficult wildflowers to establish, but if it does, it is EXCELLENT, and only by trying will you ever know the answer.

Help to reseed each year with vigorous raking/scrarification/harrowing, and add extra plugs for grass introduction/balance, and fresh seedlings that you KNOW have germinated.