Tag Archives: fall planting

Sequencing Garden Construction to Avoid Conflict

What to do with all that creative garden energy while you wait for fall to plant?  Get the rest of the landscape ready!  Plants should be the finishing touch on a garden to protect them from damage during other gardening projects.

Once you’ve completed your garden master plan, decide whether you want to tackle the whole garden or divide it into smaller projects to be completed individually.  Which ever approach you take, there may still be infrastructure projects that should be done first to avoid conflict later on.  The key concept:  Don’t paint yourself into a corner!

At the top of the list is grading your site to ensure drainage away from your house and other structures.  Water is the enemy of buildings.  Take the time now to evaluate and correct any problems you have with drainage.  At the least, make sure that all earth and paving slopes away from your house for a minimum of 5′.  If you have dampness or puddling near or under your house or smell mold or mildew during wet seasons, you may need to install drainage structures such as drain inlets/piping or french drains to carry water away from your house.

Consider where you may need to use heavy equipment and make sure that your current phase of construction doesn’t block access routes.

Placing Boulders with a Loader

If you are adding an automatic irrigation system, electric lighting, or gas for a barbecue, consider the needs of the entire garden and where your piping or wiring will need to go. Trench and install piping or sleeves (larger diameter piping through which the actual  pipes can be run) in areas that will be constructed during your current phase to service future phases.  If  piping or sleeves must run through paved areas, make sure it is installed well below grade to allow for excavations for base rock, sand, and paving materials.

Do you want to replace your lawn with drought tolerant native plants?  Summer is the time to let the sun do the work of killing your lawn using a technique researched by UC Davis called Solarizing.

Once your infrastructure projects are finished, you can start adding the fun stuff.  Construct your hardscapes such as paving, decks, walls, shade structures, boulders, etc., now.  Keep referring to your master plan; sequence construction to avoid future conflicts.  For example, if you want a pergola over your stone patio, get footings and post bases in before you pave.

Install Pergola and Fencing Footings Before Paving

After construction is complete, prepare your soil for planting.  Loosen compaction caused by construction.  If you are planting edibles or ‘traditional’ landscape plants (i.e., not natives), amend the soil as necessary.

And, finally, when fall arrives, you are ready to install your plants.  They’ll put their energy into root development and reward you with vigorous growth and vitality next spring.

Urging Restraint

Winter is finally releasing its strangle-hold on the landscape, buds are bursting, the hillsides are glowing chartreuse, and I really feel like digging holes in my garden.  Which is fine, if I want to plant things that like to be watered.  Fruits, veggies, ‘normal’ landscape plants, stream-bank

Coffee berry is a Butte County native that can tolerate some summer water

plants, shade lovers . . . these guys all enjoy being released from the confines of their containers into real dirt when spring is springing.  I’ll water them during planting and keep doing so as they need it through spring, summer, and fall until the rains begin.

 

But . . . and I hate to say this because I don’t want to convey anything but complete enthusiasm for native gardening . . .  I’m trying not to plant super drought tolerant California native plants now. Excellent dryland plants such as Ceanothus, White Manzanita, Foothill Penstemon, and Canyon Live Oak deserve to be in the garden, but will reward you with their best vitality if you wait until fall to plant them.

Here’s why.  The natives that grow on hot, dry sites have evolved to thrive in our summers without supplemental water.  To do this, they require well developed root systems.  Their root systems do not like to be watered in the summers; the most drought tolerant species are actually prone to dying if they receive summer water.  So, the best way to ensure their health is to water them well at planting and then leave them alone.  No water, no fertilizer.

If I try to plant super drought tolerant natives now, with summer just around the corner, chances are much lower that they will be able to grow enough roots to allow them to survive unwatered until the rains come.  If I just can’t help myself and irrigate them, they might survive.

Foothill penstemon will do best without summer water

Or,  the combination of water and warm soil may cause them to develop  fungal root disease.

 

I’d prefer to wait until fall to plant these beauties.  If I get them in the ground in October or November, before the rains start in earnest, they will have all winter and spring to grow those essential roots.  By next summer, they’ll be ready for drought.  If it’s a dry spring, I’ll water them before the weather starts heating up to help them establish  and ‘charge’ the soil.  But, once it gets hot, I’ll turn the water off .  And the success rate will be much higher than it would have been if I’d given in to the temptation to plant right now, in this beautiful spring weather.  The beauty and satisfaction of using the most appropriate plants for our environment is worth waiting for the right planting time.

Plants should be the last thing to go into a landscape, whether they are our wonderful drought tolerant natives or not.  Next post, I’ll share ideas on sequencing the installation of a new landscape.