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| Ms Bee visits a California Poppy |
Before
we begin to think about how
to grow California native plants, let's think about why
we might want to grow California native plants. The native
vegetation, through evolution, is adapted to this climate, these soil
types and interacts with other natives (insects, mammals, birds,
reptiles) in an ecological dance that was going on long before humans
arrived, and certainly before the present civilization of humans
arrived on scene. Their niche in the ecology of California gain some
advantages to the gardener:
They
Save Water
Once established,
many native plants need little or no irrigation. Not only does one
save the limited amount of water we have available, that saves one
money.Lower Maintenance
Less pruning and no fertilizers means less work for a gardener, saving time to learn more propagation and take more courses at UCLA Extension
Pesticide Freedom
Native plants interact with the insects of their environment in a way that eliminates pesticide use. The pests and diseases evolved with the plants and native plants have their own defense against them. Beneficial insects often become collateral victims when we spray pesticides (even more true if we use organic methods). Stop poisoning ourselves and our world.
Invite Wildlife
Native plants, birds, butterflies, beneficial insects, and interesting critters are, as noted above, co-evolved to be here. Current research shows confirms what many have intuited for many years: native wildlife clearly prefers native plants. California’s wealth of insect pollinators can improve fruit set in your garden, while a variety of native insects and birds will keep your landscape free of mosquitoes and plant-eating insects. Open your garden to these wild living things that live among us, despite what we have done to their habitat.
Support Local Ecology
While creating native landscapes can never replace natural habitats lost to development, planting residential and commercial gardens, parks, and roadsides with California natives can provide a “bridge” to nearby remaining wildlands.
California
native plants are a world unto their own, mostly because we have so
little familiarity with them. By that I mean, our culture's
experience with growing these plants is something like 250 years –
many a good deal less, like 60 years. And that is also the time
we've been selecting them for our gardens. On the other hand, beans,
lettuce, cabbage, onions have been in cultivation for thousands of
years. Over that time, civilizations have selected year after year
those plants that adapt to our culture, or in the case of stubborn
plants, we have figured out how to make that plant grow to suit us.
This selection process has yet to occur for California natives. Add
to that the fact that these are plants from the driest of the world's
Mediteranean climate that have adapted to survive with cool, wet
winters and long, hot, droughty summers, in a land ravaged by
frequent wildfires and you have plants that are, by nature, not ready
to accept the regimen we intend to use to make them grow.
The
cycle that California native plants live by is almost perfectly
backwards to the cycle by which we want to make them grow. We want
to plant in Spring (along with our tomatoes and marigolds) and have
flowers blessing our landscape by July, if we insist on this, we will
spend much more money on therapy than plants! Plant California
natives in fall, when we hope for rain to establish them, and enjoy
the fecundity of flowers in March/April. Right now, in the
California native garden, some salvias are blooming, I've seen Blue
Eyed Grass and some poppies blooming. By mid-March, the scene is
breathtaking!
Being
essentially wild plants, these plants of our home employ many
different mechanisms to ensure that at least some of the seeds will
find conditions acceptable to carry on the family name. These
mechanisms cause for wacky germination of their seeds that drive
gardeners batty and can be imitated by gardeners, if one knows the
mechanisms a given plant uses to germinate at the most propitious
moment for plant survival include:
germination
after a fire
germination
after cooler temperatures indicate winter
germination
as daylight gets longer, indicating more longer days
germinating
over a long period of time to have at least some of them hit ideal
growing conditions
Meeting
some of these conditions, for a gardener can be difficult. In order
to imitate conditions that would break these inhibitors, one must
understand the process the seed goes through in order to mimic it.
In the case of fire causing germination, is it the heat, the chemical
residue left by the fire or both that causes the seed to germinate
when there is less competition for natural resources? If it is
chemical, the commercially available 'Liquid Smoke' could be added to
the container in and initial watering and that might be the key to
unlock germination. If it is heat, one will need to start a fire
over the seeds to get the heat. For example, in germinating Matilija
Poppy (Romneya coulteri) the
fire that would burn around these seeds in nature, would be composed
of Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia)
leaves. When I want to start Matilija Poppy from seed, I cover them
with Live Oak leaves and set them on fire. My thought is that the
temperature, the chemistry needed for the poppy to sprout will best
be approximated by those leaves of the oak with which it can often be
found. I might be just a little too fixed on this, but my results of
poppy germination have been excellent.
Cold
and heat is usually coupled with the word 'stratification,' cold
stratification being the most common.
david
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