seeds for the fall planting season

The cur­rent house project reached a mile­stone, with us get­ting reach­ing the water­proof house wrap stage, ready for the sid­ing. What this really means is that it’s no longer a race against the start of the fall rains to get this far. I can slow down a bit and get back to some things in the garden.

The cool, short­en­ing work days sig­nal that the fall plant­ing sea­son is approach­ing. As in the past I have new plants I’d like to try grow­ing from seed. Con­sult­ing the really handy Seed Prop­a­ga­tion of Native Cal­i­for­nia Plants by Dara E. Emery, I see that the author rec­om­mends plant­ing annu­als by the end of Octo­ber, and sow­ing lupines by Octo­ber 15. So it’s really time to get myself in gear.

at-the-tree-of-life-nursery_0001

I’ve already received my order from Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion, mostly annu­als, most of them plants that I looked at dur­ing the win­ter and spring bloom­ing sea­son and decided to try. I saw this plant com­bi­na­tion at the Tree of Life Nurs­ery on my last visit. I liked how the plants looked together, and added two of the three plants to my order: the gor­geous deep pur­ple Parry’s phacelia, Phacelia par­ryi, and the perky yel­low desert marigold, Bai­leya mul­ti­ra­di­ata. Another plant I scoped out on my spring treks was the sting­ing lupine, Lupi­nus hir­sutis­simus, and the Payne Foun­da­tion cat­a­log had it. The pink, pur­ple and yel­low flow­ers of the three species should play well together. It won’t be any­thing too sub­tle, but what do you want out of spring­time flowers?

Another inter­est­ing cat­a­log, one that I’m look­ing at is Ginny Hunt’s Seed­hunt. She’s got over forty sages from around the world, a dozen unusual restios from South Africa, and a nice rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Cal­i­for­nia natives. The lat­ter include an attrac­tive cream vari­ant on the nor­mally orange rancher’s fid­dle­neck, Amsinckia ver­ni­cosa var. fur­cata ‘Gris­wold Hills,’ along with some of the neat tar­weeds, hem­i­zo­nia, seven dif­fer­ent clarkias, the less com­mon Salvia car­d­u­acea, as well as the sting­ing lupine and Parry’s phacelia that I’ve already got.

Where many cat­a­logs offer species and hybrid pop­u­la­tions where the population’s traits have been fixed through sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of self­ing and sib­ling crosses, Seedhunt’s list­ing includes seed mixes of what appear to be open-pollinated agas­taches and dahlias. If you have a sense of adven­ture mixes like this are a brave way to go. Because the exact pollen par­ents aren’t known, the plants that you get will show a cer­tain amount of vari­a­tion. The down­side is that the plant size, exact flower color and maybe their size and shape your plants might not fit neatly with their neigh­bors in a man­i­cured bor­der. The fun part about this is that you’ll get a plant that’s not exactly like some­one else’s. If you like adven­ture, this might be just the thing.

Seeds from Payne Foundation

So this next week I hope to get at least some these seeds in pots or in the ground. It’ll be a great break from all the house projects. And Sat­ur­day the San Diego chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety is hav­ing their big plant sale of the year at Bal­boa Park. I’m not sure I’ll have time to plant a cou­ple dozen new plants, but I’ll plan on check­ing things out and see­ing what calls my name. There’s always time to look at plants.

October 12 2009 05:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: •

5 Responses to “seeds for the fall planting season”

  1. Nell Jean on 12 Oct 2009 at 7:01 am #

    My favorite thing to think about and do is col­lect­ing seeds for the next sea­son. I lay awake last night think­ing of the Titho­nia that is flag­ging and needs pulling up: Should I gather more seed heads? Is a half gal­lon pitcher full enough? Titho­nia is a favorite of but­ter­flies here and I want them to have plenty next year. One plant grew so tall and wide that I had to sup­port it with a steel fence post.

    I should be out check­ing seeds in native plant areas now instead of writ­ing here, which is my sec­ond fav thing to do, talk about seeds.

    I hope your project turns out as anticipated.

  2. George on 12 Oct 2009 at 11:11 am #

    Thanks for the heads-up on the plant sale at Bal­boa Park. I’ve been won­der­ing why SD doesn’t have a nurs­ery that spe­cial­izes in natives and drought-tolerant plants. Every­body has some, but I want a whole nurs­ery with noth­ing but!

  3. elephant's eye on 12 Oct 2009 at 12:41 pm #

    I won­der which of our Restios are in your seed list?

  4. lostlandscape on 12 Oct 2009 at 7:24 pm #

    Nell Jean, thanks for the wishes on the project! I can hardly wait to get back into the gar­den. I’d guess that a half gal­lon pitcher of titho­nia seeds will make an incred­i­ble show next sea­son. Are these the big orange ones? They’ll be able to see your gar­den from space! You have a spec­tac­u­lar year to look for­ward to.

    George, I’ll def­i­nitely plan on being there, as early as I can get there. It’s a trudge to the clos­est native nurs­eries, all right. Escon­dido or San Juan Capis­trano aren’t exactly close, though I try to hit them a cou­ple trips per year.

    EE, for this sea­son I’m most inter­ested in the drought-tolerant Rhodocoma arida. I have sev­eral plants of short-growing Tham­no­chor­tus from last fall’s sow­ings, mainly T. acumi­na­tus, and I have a small clump of Chon­dropetalum tec­to­rum that won’t remain small for long at its cur­rent growth rate… They’re great plants.

  5. Barbara E on 14 Oct 2009 at 3:06 pm #

    Ran­cho seeded the Bai­leya mul­ti­ra­di­ata a cou­ple of years ago and they have been truly amaz­ing. They seem to bloom con­stantly nearly all year — cer­tainly dur­ing hot­ter half of the year.

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