Seed Flats II

Tom, David, Nanci and John volunteered. We created remaining seed flats, as remainder of seed was delivered Thursday. David filled in for watering during the week; seed flats can not dry out, else the germinating seeds will die. We won’t do more seed flats unless the seeds we’ve used are not viable or there is some problem.
We reviewed “bumping up” for our next work day: when to do: after 1st set of true leaves, potting soil from Tree of Life Nursery, slow release fertilizer (Scotts “Osmocote Plus”, 8-9M, 15-9-12), pots to use and labeling.
Santana Winds are due the first part of the week: hot and dry with temperatures expected in mid-90’s F. David will come by twice a week to check/water seed flats the first week. I’ll do the 2nd week.

Plant List 2007/8

Seed Flats 2007/8

Today we did initial seed flats for the year. When we get remainder of the seeds, we’ll finish off the seed flats. Today we had help from Nanci, Sarah, John, David, and Wendy and her daughter. This year tried a new strategy of mapping the flats before the work day… worked OK, but with some of the seed missing this plan was not too great. Also new was measuring seed before starting flats, a good idea, but probably should have been done before this work day. All equipment was sanitized with 10% bleach solution. We are again doing alternate seed flats to be kept away from Nursery… in case of trouble. We also did set of pots of Milkweed. All told: 9 flats using 23 seed lots and 4x32 pots. See slide show.

First Work Day 2007/8 Plant Year

Today was our first official work day of the season, and what a busy day it was: cleaning, arranging and working with seeds. Volunteers included Nanci, John, Sarah, David, and Paul.
To get things started we moved the hutches out, which had been on their side protecting the oaks and dudleya. The seed cleaner, which we don’t know how to use, was moved out too. Nanci bumped up and planted a few remaining oak trees. All this to make room so we can work under the poly-film roof… in case it rains.
Sarah and David cleaned out and organized storage bins after 4 years. Paul and John cleaned and sanitized seed flats (15). Also Paul filled one of the cisterns with city water… in case we don’t get rain.
Finally David, Paul, John and Nanci helped do seed cleaning from this summer.

Next work day we’ll be able to focus on getting seed flats ready, so we can meet our goal of having container plants ready by the end of February.

Seed collecting

Went seed collecting today to refresh the Nursery’s seed bank, especially for this years plants: CA sage brush, monkey flower, mountain mahogany, golden yarrow, goldenbush, piney-leaf goldenbush, and Juncus patens(?). The CA fuchsia was a bust… looks like it didn’t even bloom. The mountain mahogany seeds were scant, as prior years the tree’s looked like featured boa’s.

The Willow-Laurel loop is really a treasure chest of plants (thank you Sarah for this observation). Along Willow so much was dried up together, it was very difficult to determine identify plants.

The oak trees: scrub and coastal live, have acorns ....on the trees that were bearing. What determines if an oak will bear is a mystery. I saw at least 5 scrub Oak loaded with acorns. The acorns will be ready to harvest when they start to turn brown, and are easy to pull from the cap… probably in 3-6 weeks.

Scrub oak acorns:

Coastal live oak acorns:

Getting ready for the 2007/8 year

Met and talked with Meg Jones, our new Executive Director of the Laguna Canyon Foundation. We talked about the need for planters in March/April timeframe and the need for a meeting about restoration logistics: plots, methods, and followup. Meg made a strong commitment that the Restoration side of things would come together this year. When the number of planters and days, then we will have a better idea of number of plants we should do for the 2007/8 year.
The pictured 5 gallon pots are an experiment using recycled soil. Also this is a test to see how well plants can hold up to environment with only watering every two weeks. Pictured are scub oak, Quercus berberidifolia, and mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus betuloides. The final test is putting them in the ground when the rains start. This may be what we do with our tree-like plants.

Many thanks to Francisco, Rick and Fidel for helping with checking and cleaning rain collection gutter. This is very hard to do by oneself.

Welcome the 2007/2008 year

Let us welcome the new year for the LCWP Nursery. We’ll start our seed flats at the beginning of October, in anticipation of our plants being ready for planting in March/April 2008. We’ll begin with an introduction session, so everyone can meet each other, we can cover any questions, and the plan for this year can be discussed.