Freshen Up

Fall is descending on the Monterey Peninsula, and the early rain means things are off to an early start. I was enchanted to see the tiny green fuzz of millions of seeds germinating just a week after that first rain. My crop of annual wildflowers is germinating already, California Poppy, Globe Gilia, Linaria, Baby Blue Eyes (Nesophila), Fiesta Flower (Pholistima) and others.

Now is the time to trim up and clean, remove dead wood, as the natives begin to awake from their dry deason dormancy.

I am making seed mixes, annual, perrennial, California native, to use on client properties, for restoration and some for civic projects here in my home town of Marina. The best weed control is a healthy mix of growing things. Weeds love a vacuum; bare dirt, road edges, disturbed ground. These are the places where weeds move in first. I combat this by establishing natives and selected seeds and plants, then thinning and removing the invaders. It can take a while to learn to tell the good guys from the bad guys when they are all one inch tall.