January 22, 2019
Things to Do in the Native Garden Week 1/21
In southern California you can plant and grow plants (at the nursery) all year but you can’t grow everything all year. Some things are best to get into the ground now because they are starting to grow rapidly and have a hard slow down at the end of spring like penstemons and pacific coast irises. Other things are more forgiving to a degree like Ceanothus, manzanitas, sages. Still, some natives do just fine if planted in the heat of summer like Heteromeles, desert mallow, and California fuchsia.
So you can plant anything now but if you want to see your pacific coast irises growing and blooming this spring and your penstemons too, they need to be in the ground.
Here are some of the penstemons (tube flowers) we grow.
A few of pictures of the many, and I do mean many, different pacific coast irises we grow. These are hybrids of our native irises.
In the nursery we’re transplanting a lot of 1-gallon plants to bigger 5-gallon pot as they are right at the edge of the rapid growing season. And still planting seeds too.
In your garden this is still time to clean things up and cut things back. The sages, desert mallows, verbena and lots of other stuff too can be cut back about 1/3rd. Generally you don’t cut Ceanothus or manzanita but if you’re going to do it then now’s the time.
Send questions and I might even be able to give you a correct answer.
