Planting Native Plants in Redding, CA
- Doug Mandel
- Apr 16
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 22
You will come across many paths on how to plant your treasured California native plant. My planting spiel to gardeners has evolved over the past twenty years of Master Gardener observations and literature research. If you already have a method that works for you, then feel free to read no further. Since a top goal of mine is “gardening success”, especially related to native plant gardening, here are a few of my thoughts for a more successful gardening experience: 1. Right plant, right place, right time, and right purpose. 2. Best planting regimen. 3. Best regimen for plant establishment during the first two to three years. 4. Thoughtful maintenance practices thereafter, very important for long-term success.
This blog post will concentrate on my planting regimen and plant establishment. Fall is the best time to plant your California native plants, but winter and spring work too. The native plants that hunkered down during the summer sizzle are now bursting with new growth after a few nice storms and the warming soil.
It took these storms to eventually saturate the dry, dry soil left over from this year’s dry summer and mostly dry fall. The current new growth supports a healthy root system. Root growth in fall/winter/spring leads to a larger root network that will provide more life-saving nutrients and water during the hot summer months ahead.
I dig a hole as deep as the soil in the pot and two to three times as wide as the pot – some people go as far as five times as wide - to help coax the roots out laterally. Fill the empty hole with water. This will ensure saturation of the immediate area with water and give you an idea of drainage, which is important to know before planting. If the hole takes hours to drain, and your plant is known to not tolerate poor drainage, consider choosing another plant for this hole or plant on a mound or berm. The California Native Plant Society recommends, “Select plants that suit the site rather than modify the site to suit the plants.”
Before resting your treasured plant into the hole, there are several more steps. First, thoroughly water your plant in the pot. The idea is to plant wet roots into wet soil. Second, mix a small amount of organic fertilizer into the backfill, which is the soil you removed from the hole. Use the low end of the recommended amount stated on the fertilizer container. Some people recommend amending native plants and some say not to. My reasoning: 1. The mild, long-acting organic fertilizer is gentler around the roots and helps with transplant shock. 2. The phosphorus and potassium, which translocate slowly through soil and are key to good root health, are immediately available to the nearby roots. The backfill should be the native soil unless the backfill contains rocks, or the native topsoil was scraped off during construction and never replaced. In either case I try to mimic the soil of the plant’s native habitat and mix it into the backfill. Research is key to the right plant, right place. Use any large rocks removed from the hole as part of a berm around the young plant, which will prevent irrigation and rainwater from running off. Bert Wilson, past lead plantsman at Las Pilitas Nursery, advocated for planting a large rock near the SW side of the plant. This deserves an entire blog post later.
Removing the plant from the pot: Some native plants prefer minimal root disturbance, and some do not mind. If the pot is congested with roots, usually the sign of a vigorous plant species or a plant living in that pot a bit too long, gently teasing apart the mass, opening the root ball, and freeing the outer roots will help those roots to eventually spread outward. Shaving off the bottom layer of root-bound plants or scoring the roots often reinvigorates perennials and grasses. BTW, the holes I dig are square, and I roughen the sides with my favorite garden tool, the CobraHead®. You want the roots to penetrate the sides of the hole and spread outward instead of glancing off smooth walls and growing in circles.
Now place the plant in the bottom of the hole, making sure the top of the pot soil is slightly above grade. This is important, especially for native plants that do not like their roots sitting in water-logged soil. If the plant is too low, add soil back into the hole to raise the plant. If the plant seems too high, not to worry because you can create a mound around the plant. Planting in a mound above grade works well. This will account for the invariable settling of the plant and leave room around the plant for two to four inches of mulch that you will add later. It is better to err on a plant planted too high than too low, especially trees and shrubs. The mound should incorporate all the potted roots. A mound with a plant sticking out may look odd at first, but rest assured the addition of mulch transforms the oddity into a naturalistic planting. Besides, I have experienced too many low plantings and would much rather see a native plant elevated than hidden in a hole. The goal is a strong root flare and a plant not constantly in a pool of water during rain/irrigation events. Not many native plants thrive in water-logged soil that prevents the exchange of air to feed the roots.
Back to planting: Add about a third of the backfill around the plant and then water once again. The watering both ensures soil and root saturation and removes the large air pockets. I repeat this two more times until all the backfill covers the root ball, again leaving room for the two to four inches of mulch. I build a basin/berm around the mounded plant, roughly two feet in diameter for a one gallon or less potted plant. The basin holds the mulch and supplemental water until the plant is established, usually two to three years. Some practical math - about two gallons of water adds one inch of water to a two foot diameter basin. And one inch of water added to the basin will travel eight to twelve inches deep in dry, loamy soil, the perfect watering depth for a newly planted one gallon plant. I finish filling the basin and a little beyond with two to four inches of the mulch of choice, preferably organic mulch. Keep the mulch at least six inches away from tree trunk flares, plant crowns, and plant stems. Moisture and hot temperatures at the base of plants provides the ideal microclimate for disease. Mulch, however, is key in Redding to conserve water by slowing soil moisture evaporation, modulating the soil temperature for healthy roots, and keeping weed seeds in the dark and preventing their germination. Fill the basin with water one last time with two gallons of water. You may hear the plant say, “Ahhh, I needed that. Thanks!”
During subsequent waterings, I pay attention to how quickly the soil absorbs water. If I apply water from a watering can with a good stream and the water disappears quickly, I suspect the water is traveling down an air space, like a rodent tunnel, instead of soaking the entire root zone. I gently push on the soil around the new plant, often collapsing a tunnel or a stubborn large air space. Now the water should remain in the basin like normal. The vole (meadow mouse) is my rodent nemesis, an underappreciated garden menace in my view. Their tunnel entrances are difficult to spot, and when detected it is often too late for the plant. Voles tunnel, eat roots, and can girdle plant crowns.
Another nuisance is weeds. If you have read this far, great, but weed control should be one of the first steps before planting. If the weed population, including the seed bank, is not greatly diminished before planting, the war on weeds will persist as a major maintenance chore for a long, long time. How to control weeds is another huge topic for another day.
There is one more garden intruder to address. If you do not have deer pressure, count yourself fortunate. Although, they are fun to watch when they are not shredding prized plants. I secure a small cage around any new plant to prevent browsing. Deer will often browse plants they rarely eat and then spit out the easily uprooted plant. Unless I see this act of poor manners and quickly replant, the chance for plant survival is low. I leave the cage up for a couple of years until the established plants can survive some herbivory and the inadvertent human trampling. The cage often doubles as a structure to hold shade cloth, like burlap, that protects vulnerable young plants from the sun, at least through the establishment phase. The cage will also mark the herbaceous perennials that seem to disappear during dormancy and then magically reappear in spring.
Knowing where and what is planted will reap many future benefits. Tag, flag, or stake the location of the new plant at a minimum. Make a map. Knowing where plants live in your garden leads to making notes about your garden, what works, what does not work, and why. Serious observation time entices the gardener further into our amazing ecosystem. A garden journal of writings and sketches opens all senses to Nature’s wonders at many levels.
To add or not to add mycorrhiza, a symbiotic association between a fungus and a plant, is a common question. I think the jury is out. Since there are so many kinds of ectomycorrhizas and endomycorrhizas and so much not known, the mycorrhizal species that may benefit your plant might not exist in whatever mix you buy. If the surrounding soil is healthy, mycorrhizas should already exist in the soil/plant ecosystem. If the soil lacks beneficial micro-organisms, inoculating the garden with actively aerated compost tea (AACT) often work wonders, albeit not knowing exactly which fungi have symbiosis with which plant or what beneficial bacteria, protozoa and nematode are in the brew. Or, take a handful or two of soil from the same species thriving nearby, which is another method of soil inoculation. The goal is to nurture the soil which in turn nurtures the plants.
This is the planting regimen I believe will help lead to successful native plant gardening. I recently heard from a person who purchased native plants from various nurseries last fall. The plants died. The postmortem analysis revealed a smelly mess of rotting roots. The plants likely died from over-watering and “living” in an awful anaerobic environment conducive to disease over the hot, hot summer. The customer said, “This is probably good for you, because now I need to buy more plants.” I do not see it that way. I would much prefer to hear about flourishing plants and happy gardeners rather than dead plants needing replacements.
If you have alternative methods and reasoning or other input, please pass them along to me. Knowledge provides diversity of thought, always beneficial. Aristotle's Metaphysics begins: “All men by nature desire to know.”
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