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. Recon Mountain of PotsIn 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. con­tinue reading »

November 27 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: • • • | 3 Comments »