berries, birds, butterfly plants, California Native Plants

Native Plants for the Santa Cruz Mts

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In celebration of Native Plant Week earlier this month, let’s talk about using . How do you pick the best ones for your situation and what do they need to grow in your garden?

California is a vast domain when it comes to natural features and different soils. From hills to mountains to deserts to valleys and ocean bluffs, there are 6000 plus plant species within our borders. Hundreds of these are showy and useful plants worthy of cultivation in our garden. Some, like ceanothus, have already been cultivated for a century or more, both here and abroad.

There are features of the California landscape that present a certain flavor and seasonal progression, quite distinct from that of the subtropics and year-round, moist forests that many traditional garden plants come from. Plants of hilly and mountainous areas are often found in rocky or sandy soils and require well-drained garden soils. Many plants of the chaparral have poor resistance to the root pathogens that thrive in a warm, moist soil and may not tolerate typical garden style irrigation in summer.

Matching or creating the right conditions is the key to success to grow California natives. Planting on a raised mound or berm, for instance, is one way to drain water away from sensitive crowns. Knowing where in California a given native plant comes from can help you make the right decisions.

That being said there are many natives with an amazing broad tolerance of different conditions. Heteromeles arbutifolia or toyon grows in both sandy and clay soils as does Achillea millifolium or yarrow which is also a good cut flower. Carex grass and Erigeron glaucus or Seaside daisy also do well in most soils.

If you garden in clay soils,  good native shrubs are Western redbud, manzanita, spicebush, bush anemone, ceanothus, garrya, Pacific wax myrtle, western mock orange, blue elderberry, mahonia, California wild rose and snowberry. Native perennials for clay soil include coral bells, sticky monkeyflower ( a good cut flower ), salvias, deer grass, rubus and Dutchman’s pipe vine.

Sandy conditions require California natives that are decidedly drought tolerant. You may already grow many of our manzanitas and ceanothus. But do you also have lupine, lavatera, coffeeberry, buckwheat, fuchsia-flowering gooseberry, purple sage, wallflower or the beautiful Douglas iris?

Then there are the folks that live in the shade. Native plants from canyons and riparian areas will do well in your garden. They require some summer watering but that’s all. Native shrubs that tolerate bright shade are manzanita, spicebush, bush anemone, ceanothus, mahonia, Ca. wax myrtle, any of the ribes, wild rose, snowberry and huckleberry. Perennials for color are columbine, Western bleeding heart, Ca. fuchsia, Douglas iris and coral bells.

Where ever you garden, to provide food and nectar or berries for our winged friends be sure you have some flowering currant, sticky monkey flower, coffeeberry, salvia clevelandii, Dutchman’s pipe vine,wax myrtle, Ca. fuchsia, aster chilensis or seaside daisy.

vegetables

Vegetable Gardening in Spring

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April is a month of change in the garden.  The word originates from the Latin aperire which means to open and refers to this month being the season when trees and flowers begin to open. Thanks to abundant rainfall this winter I see trees, shrubs and flowers blooming profusely. They appreciated last season’s rain but this year is the icing on the cake and everything wants a part of it. 

If cool spring weather has kept you from planting your vegetable garden, don’t worry.  As night and soil temperature warm, newly planted starts and seeds will grow quickly. Don’t plan to plant the whole garden at once. Make a drawing so you can leave space for the veggies that like it warmer.

Remember that cool season vegetables include beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, kale, lettuce, onions, radish and spinach.  These don’t mind cold soil and chilly weather. Crops that prefer night temps of 55 degrees and over but will tolerated an occasional light frost are tomatoes bell peppers, corn beans, squash, cucumber, muskmelon and pumpkin. Distinctly warm weather, long season crops that need temperatures in the 70’s are watermelon, eggplant and chilies. You can’t rush Mother Nature.

You can raise the temperature of the soil by laying clear plastic (not black ) over the surface. Be prepared to protect plants at night with row covers, hot caps, cardboard boxes or anything that will trap heat during the night until temps are right for your crop.

Rotate the beds when planting your vegetables to avoid a build up of diseases and insects that can survive in the soil or on plant residue.  Don’t plant the same or closely related vegetables where they grew in the last 2-3 years. 

Pay attention to the watering needs of each kind of plant, otherwise you might plant high water use vegetables beside ones that need need less water.   This can not only waste water but can actually harm plants.  A good guidelines is to group plants by how big they get and how fast they grow. The bigger and faster they grow, the more water they’ll use.  Plant heavy water users at one end of the garden, light users at the other. For instance, plant shallow rooted beets, bush beans, carrots, lettuce, spinach, radishes and other greens together as they grow at about the same rate and use similar amounts of water.  Corn, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes and squash combine well as they all grow rapidly and need lots of water.  Another tip is not to mix new (successive) plantings of carrots, lettuce and other crops with existing ones as water use changes as the plants mature. 

Vegetables at maturity that root over 48" deep are tomatoes, watermelon, pumpkin, winter squash, asparagus, sweet potatoes, and artichoke.  When watering wet your soil to this depth to keep them happy.  Moderately deep rooting veggies ( 36"-48" ) are beet, beans, carrots, chard, cucumber, eggplant, muskmelon, peas, pepper, summer squash and turnip.  Shallow rooting ( 18" – 24" ) veggies include broccoli, cabbage, celery, corn, garlic, lettuce, onion, parsley, potato, radish and spinach.  Water less if your plants aren’t full grown yet. 

Vegetables in containers are a great solution if you don’t have much space in the ground to devote to them. They warm up quicker in the spring, too. Just about anything that grows in the ground can also grow in a pot or half barrel. This includes vegetables, herbs and even small fruit trees.

Small plants like lettuces, spinach, swiss chard and herbs grow nicely in smaller pots near the back door while large edibles like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers and melons need more room like a half barrel or large 7 or 5 gallon pots.

It’s important to use fresh planing mix in your containers each year.  Heavy producers  need fresh nutrients and deplete the soil by the end of the season. Also feed your containers for the best tasting fruit and vegetables and water on a steady basis. Skip a day of watering when larger plants are at their peak and you can lose your crop. There’s no such thing as dry-farmed tomatoes in a container.

Plant something edible. You’ll be glad you did.
 

flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, flowers, fragrant plants, fruit trees, garden design, vines

A Private Arboretum in the Santa Cruz Mountains

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Recently I had the honor to tour a remarkable garden in Scotts Valley. This horticulturalist calls himself a hillbilly gardener but he is no such thing. Some of his plants come from as far away as Oklahoma, Texas and Hawaii. What a thrill to see spring growth emerge from the new leaves of his unusual trees, flowering shrubs and perennials.

Our first stop was to admire his large collection of echium candicans or Pride of Madeira. These stately shrubs reach 5-6 ft tall and 6-10 ft wide so they make quite a show when the huge flower clusters are in full bloom. Being deer resistant and drought tolerant they are perfect for our mountain environment. The color of the spikes varied from pink to lilac, sapphire blue and purple. This gardener is resourceful. He got many of his seedlings along Hwy 17 where they had reseeded after being used as brush to stabilize the slopes after the ’89 earthquake. The bees were really happy visiting the hundreds of blossoms on the beautiful spring day that I was there.

Tucked under wild cherry trees collected in Texas, are second generation iris of dark purple and pure yellow. Originally from his grandmother’s garden in Virginia, these iris are descendants from a light blue variety and a pale yellowish-beige douglas iris.

This extraordinary gardener also has a huge wild rose from Missouri covered now with fragrant white flowers, a wild olive from Texas and a sand plum from Oklahoma.  There is a yucca about 4 ft tall that he and his brother started as cuttings when they were teenagers in Port Arthur, Texas. He is also the proud father of a couple of bald cypress complete with "knees". This tree of southern swamps and other low nutrient areas grows woody projections above the ground or water level to act as a structural support and stabilizer allowing them to resist very strong winds. Even hurricanes rarely overturn them.

A beautiful Canary Island palm, planted from a seedling in 1996 that he had nurtured in a gallon can, is now over 9 ft tall.  Akebia vines grow up oak trees, passiflora and white wisteria vines up redwoods, a yellow banksia rose rambles up into a madrone and madevillea laxa is happy growing up an oak, too. A willow-leafed hakea salicifolia, indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland, graces his entry with its tiny, white fragrant flowers.

Other trees this gardener loves include Causarina, native also to Australia, sugar pine, incense cedar, Western red cedar, deodar cedar, staghorn sumac and a maytens tree.  His mother in Pennsylvania taught him to plant his first garden at age 4 and he cherishes his Eastern white pines, pinus stroblis, and giant sequoias, three of which he grew from seed.

And I can’t forget his collection of salvias. The red flowers spike of salvia confertiflora bloom year round. The beautiful salvia mexicana will soon to be covered with rich, blue flowers. He also grows salvia chiapensis and a salvia-like plant native to Hawaii called salvia lepechinia. This deliciously scented plant will be covered soon with reddish lavender lipstick-like flowers adored by hummingbirds like all the salvias.

A new greenhouse where he has a small collection of orchids will soon house new seedlings that are sprouting in a germination station under lights. Of the many Hawaiian seeds he has collected are maile, a flowering plant that is probably the oldest and most popular material used in leis by early Hawaiians, milo- a chocolate and malt powder popular in many parts of the world, gossypium tomentosum, coral vines, hibiscus and the koa tree.

There were hundreds more cool plants I learned about and got to admire that day. I’ll be visiting this garden again and again for the next round of wonders. it’s a marvel.

 

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