a visit to recon native plants
Weekend before last my native plant society organized a little propagation workshop that was hosted by Recon Native Plants. One of the sessions focused on growing plants from seed, another on propagating from cuttings. I’ve done a bit of both, though my success with seeds definitely outshines any luck with growing anything from cuttings. My main take-away for the cuttings session was to try to take the cuttings early in the morning, when the plants are least dried out. I’ll be giving that a try and sharing whatever successes or failures that that leads to.
My favorite part of the morning was a chance to tour the nursery and see a large wholesale operation dedicated to propagating California and Southwestern natives. 
In my little backyard-garden world I’m used to seeing a few plants in pots sitting around, waiting to be planted. To visit such a big facility is to see the world in a different way. Here’s an artfully arranged mountain of gallon pots filled with soil mix being planted with little artemesias. I’ll never complain again about having to pot up a half dozen transplants.
The world of commercial native plants covers a wide swath from feeding the needs and sometimes-fickle wants of home horticulturalists to supplying material for careful habitat restoration projects. Recon wholesales plants to landscapers, and I occasionally see their plants around town at various specialty nurseries. But a big portion of their production goes to habitat restoration projects.
The best of these projects use plants with genetic material from as near to the area that is being restored as possible, or to at least use examples of plants from a similar ecological niche. (A California buckwheat from the coastal area might not compete so effectively as and example fo the same species from a desert area, for instance.) 
Growing plants from location-sourced seeds is one of Recon’s specialties. Here’s an example: big sacks of seed heads of one of the plants that are called golden bush, Isocoma menziesii, from the Tijuana River Valley, waiting to be processed and sown.
Located in extreme southwestern San Diego County, about a mile from the Mexican border, Recon well may be the southwestern-most nursery in the continental United States. The grounds are an old converted dairy and have a cool industrial vibe to them, nothing like the warm and fuzzy country-cottage look and feel a lot of retail nurseries cultivate. Some of the troughs and tanks that were used to feed and water the cows take on a new life as giant planters.
I didn’t get the ID on what’s growing in this in this tank, some kind of sedge maybe?
But another tank was full of hummingbird sage, Salvia spathacea.
And there was a trough full of saltgrass, Distichilis spicata.
Unless a customer needs plants grown in a light-weight potting mix, Recon uses a proprietary blend that uses good old dirt as its base. If you find a plant from Recon in a nursery and lift it you’ll be surprised by how heavy the soil weighs, like the earth’s gravitational force is yanking twice as hard on a pot of natives. The soil they use comes from about six to eleven inches down in the ground. Higher up, the soil has more weed seeds; lower down, it has fewer of the beneficial soil microorganisms. Plants grown this way can stand a better chance of survival when they’re planted.
I took a bunch of random photos there. This is one of their propagation houses.
Here’s an area where they’re germinating hundreds and hundreds of California buckwheat.
And here’s a shade house where plants are hardened off with 30% shade before being exposed to full sun.
To end this post I don’t have any splashy photos of plants covered with flowers screaming “buy me” like you’d find at the local chain nursery, but Recon’s not that kind of place. But if you see a California landscape that’s been returned to a credible semblance of its former self after having been overrun by exotics or mauled by human development, there’s a chance that some of the plants had their origin right here.
November 27 2009 06:15 am | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: habitat restoration • native plants • Recon Native Plants • Salva spathacea
Town Mouse on 27 Nov 2009 at 8:31 pm #
Sounds like fun! Feels like propagation is in the air… I finally got my seeds into pots this week, and blessedly we even got a little rain (though the forecast for next week is warmer than average, so I’d better watch it). Good luck!
ryan on 27 Nov 2009 at 11:33 pm #
nice. a visit to a wholesale nursery gives a certain perspective on plants. never seen their plants up north.
i hadn’t thought of it, but it makes sense about taking cuttings in the morning.
Pomona Belvedere on 29 Nov 2009 at 7:04 pm #
Wow James, this is totally fascinating to me. They’ve really thought this out, clearly — the use of real dirt instead of potting soil, the varieties — and I love the repurposing of the dairy equipment. Next time I buy a native I will think of this — and thanks for the cuttings tip, I’m not so lucky with cuttings myself.