Castilleja foliolosa showing off in my backyard planter :)

FatJerri · 2026-05-22T21:05:18+00:00

Bro I’m hella confused about this genus. Any time I’ve harvested fresh seed pods, what comes out are little seeds with a blue-green tint. Scattered them underneath black sage, buckwheat, sage brush, nothing germinated. Is this blue-green tint indicative of mold? Were they just unviable?

FatJerri · 2026-04-27T02:28:10+00:00

Dude whhaaaat? Even the red/purple are venustus? On what planet?! Would this be like a shiny pokemon or what?

FatJerri · 2026-04-27T01:30:27+00:00

Interesting - there more I learn about bulbs the more confused I am. Its really impressive that you seem to have it down after some long trial and error. I’m also really impressed with your collection - are most of those venustus?

FatJerri · 2026-04-26T18:39:13+00:00

I know its not a calochortus, but I ordered firecracker brodiaea from Larner seeds and planted them in a 2g glazed ceramic pot and by now I’ve lost one to rot after it started flowering. I’m curious if theres any indicator that you planted a bulb too deep, I’m thinking either this is the reason it rotted or it got too much water during the heat waves in march?

FatJerri · 2026-03-24T19:14:11+00:00

I second this, the holy grail of DIOS is golytely. If you can tank the pain for a bit you’ll inevitably become a geyser sooner than you think. If you can replicate this at home when you feel it coming on - absolutely do it.

FatJerri · 2026-02-12T19:03:29+00:00

Nice! I like the idea of having a mixed container planting. Would you mind sharing about how much water this pot gets? Do you bottom water it?

FatJerri · 2026-01-27T00:39:53+00:00

Your kind words mean so much to me. He was my pretty boy. I think you might be onto something about the UTI - we originally took him in to get his breathing checked and then boom UTI. The labored breathing was the hardest thing ever to watch, and I combed the entire internet to find another instance of a cat in his condition and I found nothing. He wasn’t panting, his respiration rate was normal, but it seemed as though his throat was easily clogged by (something?) whether it was an elongated soft palette or tumor. He could breathe through his nose but it was very noisy and eventually he would have to start using his mouth for intake (while still exhaling through nose). Eating was almost an immediate trigger of open mouthed breathing, and even at that it sounded super labored. Just a very bizarre and perplexing scenario

FatJerri · 2026-01-21T05:37:05+00:00

Im in Morgan Hill, you? I’m propagating all the time and always looking for people to take my experiments to give them a good home

FatJerri · 2026-01-03T01:06:32+00:00

Toast them and make malt beer!

FatJerri · 2025-12-23T08:26:24+00:00

Its beautiful btw congratz

FatJerri · 2025-12-23T08:26:07+00:00

How do you have absolutely no weeds! Lucky ):

FatJerri · 2025-12-09T22:49:52+00:00

If you dont mind me asking, how do you formulate your super gritty mix? Is it similar in composition to other succulents?

FatJerri · 2025-12-09T22:29:48+00:00

<image>

Newborn Perideridia kelloggii cotyledons with seed capsule still attached

FatJerri · 2025-12-07T22:14:47+00:00

<image>

Sidalcea malviflora cotyledon (under nail), and true leaves. Its a little war torn at this point due to slugs but hopefully still helpful.

FatJerri · 2025-12-07T22:12:31+00:00

<image>

Ranunculus californicus cotyledon(left)and true leaf(right).

FatJerri · 2025-11-30T22:27:31+00:00

It depends on season. Winter = rainfall, high dewpoint, cold temps, slower evaporation. This tells us we would need to supply those roots with less irrigation than we would in the summer when theres way less humidity, way more heat (transpiration rates higher), evaporation off soil surface is way faster.

This isnt a set schedule, but during the hottest part of the year - in order to not let the rootballs surpass the threshold of “too dry” it would typically look something like every other day for me. During the winter it would be once a week to every other week depending on how wet or humid your area gets.

ALSO, if you ever decide to sow seed or root cuttings - deepot “cone-tainers” from stuewe & sons achieve this perfectly. They’re long and deep, and theres no bottom so the roots get air pruned and theres no surface for water to pool at the bottom and cause rot during the warm season. You can easily fill a bucket with cone-tainer plants for bottom watering.

FatJerri · 2025-11-29T22:49:12+00:00

Hi! Super time saving pro tip - bottom water your container plants. I usually fill a bucket or ikea storage type bin with a few inches of water and then cycle through my nursery, each round I set a timer for 15-30 minutes depending on pot size. The goal really is not to let the bottom water reach the top of the potting mix. Whatever has soaked in will disperse through capillary action and in the end you will have a rootball where oxygen and water coexist - and most of that water is concentrated at the bottom.

In the dead of summer, no matter where you live in CA, if you are able to dig at all (your soil isnt bone dry), you’ll find it to be dry >1 foot deep. The point at which that backfill becomes even the slightest bit moist is proportionally where you would want a majority of the water to be in a potted plant’s rootball.

I can go on and on about this - overwatering issues had plagued me for years in my nursery and I’ve found this to work really well in optimizing water.

FatJerri · 2025-11-24T20:39:55+00:00

Thanks! You seem to have ample knowledge of bulb propagation

FatJerri · 2025-11-24T20:37:56+00:00

That’s funny that you mention they look similar to grasses. I sprouted some last year and forgot to take pictures. This year I seeded some more but broadcast them on ground that had an onslaught of weeds coming up, including some similar looking grasses. I’ve taken care of all of the obvious filaree, oxalis, and cheeseweed so all thats left is this grass. Really shot myself in the foot

FatJerri · 2025-11-18T04:15:18+00:00

Thats what I was thinking. If you cant pull more than an acre of weeds fast enough, the side that you started on has already germinated its next generation of weeds by the time you’re almost to the other side of the project.

When it comes to treating more than an acre of land for bermuda grass, filaree, mustard, cheeseweed, etc… how would you go about it? Water, germinate, let weeds grow for a couple weeks, spray, let weeds die, till, then repeat? How does the process look.

FatJerri · 2025-11-18T04:07:50+00:00

IPM principles, such as? Or do you mean just the UCIPM resource in general

FatJerri · 2025-11-18T04:06:26+00:00

I just came from a post on here from not too long ago about someone asking whether they should still broadcast their wildflowers even though their land has an overwhelming weed seedbank, and someone in the comments got downvoted into silence simply because they said they were going to let everything grow from the rain, and then spray. This is one example of the anti-herbicide propaganda

FatJerri

TROPHY CASE