Re: thanks for ideas for sun-blasted parking strip et al.

For those of you not familiar with the Santa Maria
Valley, it is an ancient river bed.  Quite a big one
at that.  What's left of the river is a
trickling-almost-dry arroyo creek that carries water
during most of the year only when the folks up at the
damn decide to let it ooze out.

If there ever was an underground aquifer in this area,
it was sucked dry years ago by the farmers who tend
thousands of acres of farmland and pastureland that
cover most of the Valley.

Every bit of my planting has been done in late winter,
when rains have soaked the ground and continue to wet
it semi-regularly and when the air is cool.  Plants
establish well, with deep roots.  They're further
helped by the deep, infrequent soakings I give them
when the rain isn't enough.  That's important.

Some plants are marginal, though.  The Dieramas, some
Salvias, a Mimulus (now gone), and a Carpenteria in
too much sun.  If there was an underground source of
water, it sure doesn't help these plants.

Keep in mind, too, that my sand is "river sand" and
not "dune sand".  Big difference.

Joe Seals
(it's nice and sunny here today)

--- david feix <davidfeix@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd tend to agree with Moira over Joe, that some
> soil
> preparation would at least make it easier to plant
> in
> this strip, if not significantly help the plant.  I
> have found in my own experience with miserable to
> work
> compacted clay soils, that timing and soil moisture
> content are critical to making it easier to both
> plant
> and get things established.  Neither too wet or too
> dry, but that fleeting condition in between makes it
> much easier to plant, and no doubt gets plants
> better
> established as well.  This may be a case for adding
> organic amendment as a mulch, and letting earthworms
> and nature do the amending over time.  However, it
> takes significant amounts of soil amendment to
> really
> change the texture, and even several inches of
> sand/compost will just be the proverbial drop in the
> bucket.  Reapplications of  surface organic
> amendment
> annually would also be necessary to have any
> significant effect.  This is probably more important
> depending on the "toughness" of the original
> plantings, or whether follow up
> planting/divisions/relocating is being considered.
> 
> Regarding the possibility of only once a month
> irrigation in a pure river sand soil in coastal
> California, Joe's conditions do seem to hint at some
> source of subsurface water available to these
> plantings.  When I gardened next to Golden Gate Park
> in San Francisco for almost 8 years, in pure dune
> sand, once a month irrigation was insufficient to
> keep
> things looking decent, and anything that could go a
> week in clay soils without water, needed watering
> every other day in this sand.

=====
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