Weekend garden plans

It's fall, and the California garden springs into life after the first rain. I've been chomping at the bit to work in the garden and I have a long list of tasks.

My garden tasks for this weekend include cutting back the Matilija poppy, digging out some failing Penstemon next to the driveway and replanting with recent Payne Foundation acquisitions that ought to flourish better in my garden conditions: Lessingia filaginifolia 'Silver Carpet' (Silver Carpet aster) and Lotus grandiflorus (Large-Flowered Lotus).

I ought to tidy, divide, and plant more yarrow in the bare patches in front, and adjust the sprinkler for better coverage so that come spring time it looks more lawn-like. The same goes for the actual lawn, which doesn't get much supplemental water, but has now come back to vigorous life with the first rain and at least needs the string cutter. Then there's the bare patch on the parking strip that I've been meaning to turn to natives.

There's Phacelia tenacetifolia seed that I ought to distribute in my vegetable garden for soil improvement, and some other wildflower seeds that I ought to put in my One Pot At A Time pots.

My vegetable garden needs tending, and I have a bunch of onion sets to put out. I didn't know this, but whether you get green onions or regular slicing onions depends on the depth that the sets are planted. A deeper planting yields green onions. Those are the more perishable, so perhaps I'll go that way so that I can have them fresh at hand when I need them. It's time to plant lettuce and spread compost as well.

My carefullycasually tended pots of cuttings, seed starts, and garden rescues that have made it through the summer are beginning to show new growth so I ought to do something productive with them. Two of six bitter orange trees grown from seed made it. A trumpet vine cutting (1 of 6 taking for a friend) made it. The dead looking Matilija poppy in a pot is regrowing too and I noted at the Payne Foundation that they now charge $14! for a 1 gallon Matilija poppy. I could have been rich propagating Matilija poppies!

Then I'll scratch my planting itch even more using some nice designer-esque pots that I acquired last weekend when I made my previously-promised trip to the "Pot Depot" (aka Pottery Manufacturing and Distribution, Inc).

Theodore Payne Foundation has a number of attractive potted native plants and I've managed to keep a couple of my own alive over the past year after a couple miscues in the more distant past. So my goal for Sunday is to use some attractive pots I've seen recently as inspiration for my own potted native plants while maintaining a hopeful state of mind about their continued viability.

There isn't a huge amount of information out there on best planting practices for California natives in pots. What I've found is that one key to a successful potted native plant seems to be use of a mulch (TPF always uses an attractive polished rock mulch, which I try to do as well) in order to prevent excessive soil temperatures and water loss during hot months. I use a plain Jane commercial potting soil mix (this week it's Kellogg without obvious added plant foods / fertilizers). Sometimes I mix in extra vermiculite or other lightening amendments. My pots are usually oversized compared to the cheapest home improvement store pots. Most important, I think, is that they are usually deeper, which allows the deep-growing roots of natives a better chance to sustain the plant over the hot summer months. You can't grow a large plant in a small container for very long before it's too cramped.

Watering your potted natives is the key to success, and what I've found is that less is more, but only to a certain point. Cultural practices written for the garden do not apply exactly to pots. For example, one is often advised by California gardening books to withhold summer water from Fremontodendron lest it perish. What they often neglect to say explicitly is that this advice is for established plants in the garden. Fremontodendron will perish in a pot without summer water. I know this because I've killed one this way, back when I followed a more literal interpretation of the garden book guidelines. The same is true of Matilija poppies. And wildflowers will give their best in pots only if you augment rainfall with additional water.

I have a lot of new California native plants to work with. These are my latest acquisitions:

From my earlier trip to TPF I still have Arctostaphylos 'Elizabeth McClintock' (Manzanita Elizabeth McClintock ) and Ceanothus 'Powder Blue' (Powder Blue California lilac) in 1 gallon containers as well as Sidalcea malvaeflora 'Palustre' (Checkerbloom) in 4" pots.

Additionally, last weekend I made a second trip to TPF in order to browse and purchase during the last weekend of their fall sale (15% off plant materials to the general public and 10% off seeds and bulbs). I didn't really have any purchasing goals except for bulbs (I ended up with Calochortus luteus 'Golden Orb' (Mariposa Lily) and Tritelia laxa 'Corrina' (Ithuriel's Spear). Juli caught bulb fever and ended up with Calchortus splendens 'Violet Queen' and Brodiea californica). But I ended up taking home Umbellularia californica (California Bay laurel) and Quercus chysolepis (Canyon Live or Maul Oak - a tought, shorter stature, oak) in 1 gallon pots, and a couple Fragaria chiloensis (Beach Strawberry) in 4" pots, and Heuchera 'Dainty Bells' (Coral Bells).

Can I really get all this and a workout in on Sunday?

One Pot At A Time payback

I took a good amount of Phacelia tenacetifolia, Clarkia, and Gilia seed from my front yard down to the Madrona Marsh the other day. Maybe a pound all in all. This was my payback from the One Pot At a Time seed that I received from Connie Vadheim, but it felt good to spread the harvest around.

I collected the seed heads when I cleaned up my front yard back in May and it had sat in large paper bags ever since. I first put my son to work threshing the dried seed heads in a colander that I placed inside a large pot. He enjoyed it until his arms got irritated by the chaff. Bad planning on my part - I had started him on the worst one (Phacelia) and it had been stored outside (spiders?). Had I started him on an easier seed he might have lasted. I finished in a short while. Don't underestimate the power of kitchen tools.

Catching up with One Pot At A Time; garden blooms

These photos were taken on or around the 12th of May, but I have not had a lot of time to keep current with my blog.

My very own One Pot experiment with Leptosiphon (new name) Linanthus (old name) is coming along in fine style. I like this plant a lot. It has a Seussian look to it with an outsized spike-covered ball on a spindly stalk topped off with a white and golden flower. The petals of the flower turn progressively more purple - perhaps after pollination. The pots have a 12" diameter opening to give you an idea of scale.




My last official One Pot project is Douglas' Meadowfoam (Limnanthes, which I'm always confusing with the previous plant's former genus) which has not held its flowers for as long as I had hoped. Still, this is a nice annual. I wonder what the seeds will look like?



The Gilia One Pot plants that I've dissed for not germinating and over which I sowed Claytonia (which also did not germinate) have recently produced one (count it) little plant. Phhtt.

The Tidy Tips are just about done, and I've harvested seeds from them as they ripen.

Elsewhere in the garden there's a native "Seaside" daisy (Erigeron glaucus "Sea Breeze") at the margins of my dwarf citrus in the front. It's doing really well as it enters its second full year and deserves its reputation as an unfussy garden champ. The flowers are a bit more purple than this photo shows.


More like this, but it's still not quite right. I'm not too satisfied with my camera.


This pot of Lavatera babies is interesting because they came from year old seed that I scattered and then ignored, aside from moistening the soil, believing that few would germinate. Finally one tall sprout showed its head (at lower right in photo), but the leaves were devoured almost overnight. It seems to have recovered well, however, and in the meantime other plants have joined it. The seeds come from Jim Osborne, who's family (Grandmother?) gathered the originals on one of the channel islands years ago. Jim has grown it in his backyard since then.


Triteleia laxa "Ithuriel's spear". This is new as of last fall in my garden. It's a bit out of focus, but I thought I'd document it anyway.

Weekend wrapup

Today, Monday, I ate the first olallieberry from the vines. It was delicious.

Sunday my father and mother came down to celebrate Mother's Day. We ate again at Shafaa, who were offering a Mother's Day platter. It was mostly delicious: I really enjoyed the jeweled rice and kabobs. However the falafel that my father ordered was over cooked. That was the only flaw to the meal in my opinion.

My sister-in-law and brother joined us later in the evening with my son and girlfriend Juli.

My mother and father joined my as I was finishing up some gardening chores in the front yard: I used the weed whacker to demo the yarrow and shovel pruned many of the other spent wild flowers. I collected seed pods before cutting many of them down which I will mostly donate to the One Pot project.

I had read that one could prune poppies, add a little water, and get them to rebloom but I wasn't sure exactly how to prune them. I tried a number of different ways. I subsequently read that you should clip them all off close to the ground, but I'm happy to report that almost any method that removes the seed heads can stimulate new growth. It's just that they look better without the withered remains of the last bloom's leaves, so you might as well take them down to the ground.


The front yard will need a complete makeover this fall. I can't really think too hard about that now, so in the mean time here's my house before my recent yard work. This featured my neighbor's chemical lawn in the foreground (with purposely unkempt edge which he hopes will annoy me or spread his lawn contagion), then fence, Penstemon (great flower performers), driveway, then overgrown random native plantings. I exaggerate, but the yarrow meadow was past its peak bloom, the wild flowers had come and gone (except the many Phacelia next to the porch), the Mimulus had been suffering for some time, and the buckwheat plants were too large for their space and location.

I like the angle of this photo, but usually I'm parked in the drive which wouldn't give quite the same effect.

Here's what it looked like after my demo and shovel pruning. I have plans to extend the native plants onto the turf grass area next to the street so I realigned the existing meadow border at the left of this picture and added a new border that I've extended into the turf grass area (lower left). In what is now turf grass, I'll probably put pavers with low native grasses or sedges to the right of the new border and low shrubs to the left of the new border, though the kids next door might influence my choice more towards something with thorns.


Digging out Yarrow is not all that easy. This yarrow is planted too densely for optimum health but has nonetheless formed a fairly dense mat of roots. I've decided that I like it in small doses, but as a monoculture I feel it has aesthetic problems.

A lot of the dead and gone plants that I demoed yesterday were first crop Phacelia. However, I have a significant area still dedicated to a second crop of P. tanacetifolia. chuck b. also likes the shape of Phacelia and has photographed it well. The flowers curl around on themselves like a scorpion's tail, which may give rise to one of the common names, Scorpionweed. I've never heard anyone call it that around here, however. My second crop of Phacelia was sown from seed collected from last year's meadow garden, but much later in the winter than the first crop (which had the same seed source but sowed itself naturally), so it's only blooming now. Confusion among Phacelia taxa seems to be easy to come by.

Another crop that has run to its end is the Globe Gilia (Gilia capitata). Many of the seed heads were just sitting there like little cups, full of loose seed ready to be tipped into my bag for collection. I also bid farewell to my Mimulus (Sticky Monkeyflower) which I either overwatered last year or, more likely, stepped on while my son and I were removing some nearby plants earlier this year.

One Pot update

Previous updates can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.

These photos were taken on 27 April, 2008.

Linanthus ciliatus (now known as Leptosiphon ciliatus). This is doing great. Seed was from TPF and was my own little adjunct to the One Pot project.


Douglas' Meadowfoam (Limnanthes douglasii). There's some small blooms getting ready to come out that were more apparent a couple days after this photo was taken. It's looking a bit stressed though - perhaps I've overwatered. A quick Google search suggests that I ought to have high expectations for the flower - it seems to be fairly showy and long lived. Perhaps a good addition to next year's front meadow.

Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa). After this photo was taken I started harvesting the seeds for next year. Some have already distributed themselves around the yard by wind. I've placed others in good homes.

Not shown:

Miniature Lupine (Lupinus bicolor) - Almost inconsequentially small and a poor germinator

Globe Gilia (Gilia capitata) - never germinated, but I have plenty in the front yard. Perhaps it really requires full sun.

Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata)- Oversown in Gilia pot, never germinated. I've had bad luck all around with this seed. My peat pots with it never germinated either.

One Pot update

Tidy Tips are doing well.

Douglas' Meadowfoam (Limnanthes) is doing OK too.



The Miniature Lupine is a bit of an academic exercise, but now that I understand its role I'll stop having expectations of grandeur. It really is small, and seed germination was sparse. Perhaps I can scatter seed in my vegetable garden next year and use it as a cover crop. For that matter, I could do that everywhere. Las Pilitas has this to say about the Miniature Lupine

A fuzzy little lupine with gray leaves and blue flowers. Useful in revegetation mixes as I've seen it growing on some bad sites. Source: western San Luis Obispo County, California, Godd 9, February 22, 1997. coastal sage scrub. This small annual, is adaptable to a variety of soils, but conditions are best with full sun, open areas, no additional water. small annual, not noticed but very useful in California ecosystems to add nitrogen to the soil so that other plants in the community can benefit.



This is my own little One Pot experiment using Linanthus (Phlox). So far, so good.

I gave up on the Gilia since I never had a single sprout. I overplanted with Claytonia perfoliata (Miner's lettuce) but it might have been too late in the season for good growth. Alternatively, I watered to hard again and buried the seed too deeply. No picture for this.

One pot at a time status update

This post is dated 29 Feb which is when it was started, but then I saved it as a draft and completed it on 04 Mar.

It's time for a status report on my One Pot At A Time projects. One Pot At A Time may be an outgrowth of Project SOUND at Cal State Dominguez Hills. For more of what I know about it, click on the One Pot tag at the bottom of this post.

I received four different types of wildflower seed that I sowed on on 19 Jan. A fifth seed type I procured from the Payne Foundation and sowed later. I used wonderfully inexpensive ($9 each), blue glazed clay pot, 12" across, that I purchased from the seconds pile at the Pot Depot. The pots get direct sun during the middle of the day, but are shaded during morning and evening. I think the seedlings would all do better in a sunnier spot, but lack of time and higher priority projects seem to make this difficult for me. Later in the year it'll be sunnier in my back yard as the sun moves higher in the sky.

Coastal Tidytips (Layia platyglossa) - First out of the gate. I think that I took pains to distribute the seed uniformly, but it certainly came up non-uniformly. Besides the obvious reason for this (that I didn't really spread the seed uniformly) I can think of two more possible reasons: aggressive watering moved the seed around and shade from the edge of the pot has delayed the germination of the seeds on the shaded side of the pot. I think that a more recent inspection of the pot shows that I now have germination of one or two more on the right side of this picture. I've also turned the pot recently. We'll see if that hurries the more shaded side.


Douglas' Meadowfoam (Limnanthes douglasii) - Sparse germination, but perhaps these few are just leading the pack.


Globe Gilia (Gilia capitata) - No germination yet.

Miniature Lupine (Lupinus bicolor) - This had poor germination. Re-reading my information sheet I see that it likes to have the seed soaked for 24H prior to sowing. All the seeds did get the benefit of nearly a week of rain, but perhaps that wasn't soon enough after sowing.

Here's the Lupinus up close


Linanthus ciliatus (now called Leptosiphon ciliatus) from T. Payne purchse was sown later, but is coming up gangbusters already. There's been a great deal more sprouts since this photo was taken.
A zoomed image.


Edit: 05 March - These photos all have a reddish cast that I wasn't aware of when posting. This hasn't been a problem before, so I blame my fumble fingers for selecting some odd compensation setting on my digital camera.

One Pot At A Time

A previous One Pot At A Time Project post.

My son and I got four sets of seeds planted today according to the One Pot At A Time Project guidelines: medium sized containers (we're using the 12" diameter blue pots that I purchased at the Pot Depot and filled per requirements with Supersoil (the basic SuperSoil, not the premium Supersoil)

We planted Coastal Tidytips (Layia platyglossa), Douglas' Meadowfoam (Limnanthes douglasii), Globe Gilia (Gilia capitata ssp. abrotanifolia), Miniature Lupine (Lupinus bicolor (ssp. microphyllus).

I had thought that these were seeds collected in the wild locally, which is important from the standpoint that we are preserving local genetic variations. However, cultivar or selection names on some of them make me uncertain of this - I would have expected the species name only (eg. Gilia capitata instead of Gilia capitata ssp. abrotanifolia) if these were wild collected seeds.

Perhaps my understanding of plant nomenclature is not correct. Will update later after reading more about binomial nomenclaure.


Here's an email I received from Connie on 1/16
Dear One Pot Gardeners:
Welcome to all the new gardeners - you're in for a great adventure! We have over 150 people participating in the program this year.
Many of you have already planted your seeds. If not, you may want to wait until the weather cools down just a bit. You can plant annual wildflower seeds up until March or even April - as long as you keep the pots watered.
Hot, windy days can be a challenge for container gardeners. Germinating seeds and young seedlings need moist soil to survive. When the rains don't come, you'll need to supply the water. Plant in pots dry out much more quickly than plants in the ground. I check my own pots every morning (and/or evening) during hot windy weather and water as needed. I've found that tiny seedlings are best watered using a spray bottle or mister nozzel on my garden hose. Be sure that you give the seedlings enough water to really dampen the soil down to about 1 inch. As soon as the seedlings become established - which can be as short as 2-3 weeks for some species - it will be much easier to keep your plants watered.
Don't hesitate to e-mail me with questions or comments. And I'd love to see some pictures of your pots/seedlings.
--Connie

EDIT 22 Jan
I noticed the other day that while the handout materials had the selection / cultivar name on them, the seed packets did not. Perhaps the written materials for the seeds are generic to the commonly available selection.

Hey! That's my house!

I went to a seminar tonight called "Beyond the Lawn" which was held at the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve (formerly South Gardena Park).

The topic was, of course, California native plants used as lawn substitutes. I went hoping to make some contacts that would assist me in moving my design skills and plant knowledge to the next level.

The seminar was given by Connie Vadheim of CSU Dominguez Hills and was a real wealth of information. I left with the seminar contents rattling around in my brain and some wildflower seeds rattling around in envelopes plus quite a few handouts on plants that I ought to learn a bit more about. The coolest thing about the seminar was that judging by the turnout there's quite a bit of local interest in natives. There were maybe 12 or 15 people there, and so far as I know it was advertised only on the Willows website.

Imagine my surprise when towards the end of the seminar Connie was flipping through pictures of houses as examples of the use of natives and MY HOUSE WAS RIGHT THERE! I let out a yell, "Hey! That's my house!" People laughed, but as a result I ended up answering a couple questions and making a connection with another homeowner who has redone her garden with natives.

The seeds I left with are from the "One Pot at a Time" project. I'm supposed to grow them in pots, let them go to seed, and then either scatter the seed, distribute it to friends, or clean it and give it back to the Madrona Nature Center. I'm also supposed to document the growth of the plants. From the glee on her face and her comments, I'd bet that Connie thought up this insurgent little idea with the intent of repopulating our local natives. I'll play along happily.