When to cut the grass and how deep?

[eccles]

My back garden is only 35 feet long, but I've been letting it grow wild since last summer to see what species if any would colonise it. I had a minor success this week with visits from gatekeeper and meadow brown females with the latter laying eggs. Which leads me to the question in the thread title.
I remember talking to the farmer who helps manage the meadow at Buckland Wood near Taunton. he said he was instructed not to cut for hay until July 24th. So I propose to do the same, keeping a two foot wide central path short and strimming the remainder to about 3" deep. The spot where the meadow brown was laying was beneath a shrub so that will be safe.
Any suggestions?
Thanks..

[Padfield]

The date varies from year to year. In Switzerland the local Commune has to authorise the hay-making and you can't cut until it does. In general, it should be after flowering, when the meadow has 'gone to seed' (though obviously some flowers persist after this). I had my garden scythed and made into hay over the last few days. I get it done every year and the butterflies flourish (64 species, as I've mentioned before ).

First, it's scythed with a machine, then the cut hay is left a day or two. I imagine any larvae would leave the drying hay during this time and move onto living leaves. The chap then rakes the hay into rows, which he leaves again, then finally drives along the rows with a hay wain that automatically picks it up and chucks it in the back.

I just checked the length of the cut stems left over and it is about three inches. But since it's done with a scyther not a strimmer it's rather irregular, with longer clumps and some scraped ground.

It amazes me that the butterflies can survive this treatment, and then the heavy snow that will come in the winter. But they do!

Guy

EDIT - My garden was cut on Tuesday morning and this morning (Thursday) it was still looking like this:



I suspect that time is important for the butterflies.

Now it looks like this:



I'm no expert myself, but I can assure you that this time-honoured treatment, applied once a year, leads to happy butterflies.

Guy

[eccles]

Thanks Guy. I don't have much in the way of flowers yet but I've had ox eye daisy, wild primrose and white violet that are finished now. Theres some assorted stuff along the edges such as common vetch and storksbill still going. The grass itself is seeding quite well now although with the rather wet start to the month there's still a lot of green growth.