Remember that hot spell we had?

Remember the small native plant garden that I installed in the neighbor's yard at the San Pedro Annex? It's shown below after install on Sunday 5/18.

I had the misfortune of installing it right before a series of unprecedented hot days and the plants suffered for it.  I thought that I would be replacing many plants, but it turned out that at least the Encelia (Brittlebush, goldenhills, incienso) have made a recovery.  I think it helped that I clipped the branches back about 1/3rd, though not soon enough to prevent loss of nearly all their leaves.

The recovery was first evident to me on 5/24 with the releafing shown below:

By 6/1 recovery was in full swing:

6/8 even more growth:

I wasn't so fortunate with the strawberries (Fragaria) and was forced to replace all but one. Still, I felt fortunate and I'm surprised by the strong recovery of the Encelia.

Heat island miniatures

It's about time for another in my irregular feature, Don't Do This.

Let's start with a close up of 2011's and 2012's trendy plant, a succulent.  This one looks like a Dudleya.  So far so good. 

Now pan to the full expanse of yard and to see the full glory...

Rain catcher design proves too costly

I'm looking at arbor / pergola and trellis designs that I like and collecting them over on Pinterest.

Follow Brent's board Arbors and Trellises on Pinterest.

This one from Lowes caught my eye because it is simple and has a number of design elements that I might like to consider.  It also has a bill of materials and costs for each part of the construction.  Overall, this is just the sort of useful garden construction advice that I like to see online.  Bravo to Lowes.

However, one of the design features of the arbor is a "rain catcher" which is a section of 6" PVC pipe stood on end and fed by a downspout.  Go to the article linked above to see the construction details or just take my word for it. The BOM is reproduced below showing a total price of $125!!

Turf Terminators -

"A new company, Turf Terminators, will replace high water usage yards with low water, drought tolerant yards at no cost to homeowners, " according to the LA Daily News.

The plan is to use rebates from the water company to fund the conversion.  OK so far, and a reasonable way forward for many homeowners.  However, looking through the photos the design and plant selection don't seem that inspired.  Plant materials seem to be exotics (I noted oleander, kangaroo paw, a flax and perhaps one California native, Giant Wild Rye) all crowded too close together in a field of decomposed granite in this photo.  A Facebook photo shows shrubs with ground cover mulch around their bases.  Since their web site doesn't give me an easy way to see the details of their process without "getting started", I don't know if their landscapes always look like that.  They do say, "Turf Terminators' landscapers will replace your lawn with California Friendly plants and ground cover over the course of 1-2 days" which begs the question of exactly how well the lawn is removed.

Given the attention that many homeowners give to their gardens, this company might have a success on their hands.

Turf Terminators has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/turfterminators and a web site at http://www.turfterminators.com/.

My garden in May

I'm pleased with how this prostrate Chamise (Adenostoma fasiculatum can't remember the exact name) and “Santa Barbara Liveforever” (Dudleya traskiae) have grown in these clay pipes that I've placed on end.  I'll have to get some more.  I liberated the larger from underneath my parents' house where it was forgotten for a long time.  The smaller also came from their house where it was part of some yard drainage.

Click through to see more photos.

New native plant garden

At the San Pedro annex the upslope neighbor rents, but he is an avid tomato gardener, so we've bonded over that experience.  After after coordinating with the landlord and the neighbor, Stephen, we all agreed to remove some ivy and install a new garden.  Our stalwart gardener Saul Jaramillo did the heavy work of removing most of the ivy.  I redug the garden and removed the roots that he has missed.  (He did a good job, but having done this before I can attest that it's a hard task to get all the roots.  Ivy lovers - rest assured that it will spring back from some overlooked root pieces.  Ivy haters - rest assured that we'll rip it out until it gives up.)

Juli and I had long ago decided that if the opportunity presented itself, we'd put in Cercis occidentalis (western red bud) and that was the bulk of our plant investment (about $80) in 5 gallon pots.  Everything else was in about 4" pots. Neighbor Stephen had requested sunflowers, so we ended up with Encelia farinosa (brittlebush).  We added Fragaria chiloensis (beach strawberry or sand strawberry native just up the coast from LA.  I think that we purchased 'Chaval', which Native Sons suggests is not the exact right match for us, 'Aulon' being better for the care exposure this will get. ) and Sisyrinchium bellum (blue eyed grass, forgot the selection) as targets of opportunity since they had done well in a nearby garden with similar exposure (the strawberries more so.  In fact wild strawberries are some of the tougher ground covers  and I'd give them the edge in any native plant fight.)

Read on for additional pictures and a lesson learned.

Twitter leaves me bitter, but...

...I have an interest in Pinterest. 

http://www.pinterest.com/brentamorgan

I'm so new to it, that I had trouble finding the URL that links to my page, but from what I've seen I've completely abandoned previously held Pinterest skeptic point of view.  As I figure things out, I'll try to get these blog posts to send automatically to Pinterest, much like I use RSS Graffiti to post to Facebook.

I'm still a Twitter skeptic (though I have had an account for years with all of two tweets being sent);  I simply don't want to read about anything 140 characters at a time.

0.30" rain; season total 5.50"

Cool rain fell yesterday evening through the night, but cleared by morning. The San Pedro annex had 0.55" compared to my house at 0.30".




- Posted from my iPhone

Margaret's mallow 2.0

Margaret wrote to me last month, "After our rains, I thought to check your blog for rain totals and take a trip down Mallow Memory Lane. Here is a photo of my mallow (there are actually four clustered together) taken on 3/3/14. I never watered it at all! Not bad for our dry winter. The mallow has been doing really well.  I try to keep it trimmed so that it doesn't grow past 10 feet.  I'm excited for the [upcoming predicted] rain.  Every year around this time, one lone sunflower plant will spring up in my backyard.  This year I have +/-10 scattered through the yard.  I guess the squirrels have been busy."


I agree.  My native garden is doing OK with supplemental water (I have some less than one year and one year old installed plants).

The source of Margaret's mallow (Lavatera assurgentiflora) was some seed from a neighbor of mine when I lived in Hawthorne.  Their mother or grandmother had brought the original seed back from a trip to the Channel Islands. The plants are short lived, but have beautiful flowers and of course they enjoy the climate here, just a short distance from the island where they are from.

PV Blue!

Feast your eyes on the PV Blue in this photo. It's about the second best photo I was able to take with my phone during a recent PV Blue release that I participated in.  I released two of the butterflies out of about 100 that were released that day. Thank you, PV Land Conservancy!

0.02" rain; season total 5.20"

Just a light rain last night. 25-Mar 0.02" 5.20" total

Iris 'Canyon Snow'

This photo of Iris 'Canyon Snow' was the first to show its face this season on 3-15-2014. I've planted several of these Iris in a drift that should get more and more beautiful as they mature. As I write, there are numerous blooms - enough that looking ahead I decided that I'd stay away from additional white Iris and my latest acquisitions will start a drift of ruby colored hybrid Iris.

And we wonder how they get there...

Sometimes I wonder how known bad actor plants get into our wild areas.  I guess I don't need to wonder that much.  Here's photo from Sunday's grocery shopping trip to Sprouts market.

Rain 1.0"; season total 5.18"

In the morning on Mar 2, I had 1.0" accumulated in my back yard (1.5" at the San Pedro annex) from the day and night before.  I'd been away in Monrovia  (a more inland area up against the San Gabriel mountains) all day and the rain there was torrential at times, so I expected much more than the 1" that I measured back at home, but  1" is a good amount for this area.


Mar 02 1.0; season total 5.18"

This post sat in draft mode for a while, so it's a bit stale as I write this.  However, there is the benefit that we now know that we could get a drizzle later this week.  A short rain year it has been indeed.