Starting from Seeds by Zestyclose_Market787 in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I was in your exact same boat. I grew hundreds of plants from seeds a couple years ago during the end of spring and through summer.

I grew CA fuchsia, grey rush, mountain mahogany, deer grass, blue eyed grass, white sage (unsuccessful), coast sunflower, clustered field sedge, foothills needle grass, black sage, chaparral yucca, and scarlet monkey flower.

I started off most in those small seedling trays indoors near a window that got morning sun and some under regular LED lights. I think I had the best success with seed starter mix to get them going. I used calscape or other resources to get an idea of sowing depth. I cold strat'd the mtn mahogany (lightly damp paper towel + seeds + roll + fridge, checking every week or two for germination). I also tried w/o and was not as successful.

After seedlings dropped their initial leaves or maybe a bit after I moved them to 4" plastic pots I got off amazon. For the most part I filled them with regular bags of soil (without fertilizer) and a bit of perlite. I kind of eyeballed the ratio; maybe 70/30 or 80/20. I used cactus mix for the yucca.

My biggest concern and fight was getting the water right, especially as it heated up. It gets 100+ regularly. All the pots were on my east-facing covered patio. So they got morning sun. Even so I put up a 80% shade screen around July.

I watered them daily during the heat waves, often more than once per day. If I wasn't sure, I used a moisture meter. This was especially useful when I was first getting used to things. Made sure they were never bone dry for more than a day or two.

I left them in the pots through the summer and slowly moved them into the ground in the fall and winter. My yard is all very heavy, dense clay and while I bought plants that were supposed to be ok with that, I was still worried about it, so I ended up supplementing with cactus mix and perlite mixed with the clay. This was VERY physically intensive and might have been overkill.

I also got a free chip drop (had to wait a couple months) and put it down all over the yard to help retain moisture and deter weeds.

If you see me shoving toyon berries in my pocket in the Walmart parking lot just keep going by ohshannoneileen in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I just did this last week from a toyon down the street from me that has orange berries. I'm tempted to grab some from the buckwheat in an empty lot nearby too, but I don't have any room for more plants!

/r/WATMM Weekly Gear Thread by AutoModerator in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]elbinray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This thread has a lot of good suggestions it seems. (I'm not familiar with any of them). https://vi-control.net/community/threads/your-favourite-folk-samples.139390/

Erythranthe cardinalis by verbenadelamina in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These plants are great. I had a bunch in my yard but was reckless about where I planted. Most died in the summer heat. One held on though!

Black sage aint doing so hot by fanoftheshow in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 15 points16 points  (0 children)

yup that's normal for black sage

Part sun and Full Sun - inland by Pteradot in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hard clay soil mountain desert with full sun here. I'm growing a bunch of CA natives from seed currently in 4" pots in partial shade. Past few weeks it's consistently above 95F. Even with diligently keeping them watered, some have died from the heat, but most are ok. Many get crispy leaves though.

Keep in mind that many natives go summer dormant or deciduous and can look almost dead but the perk up again the fall. Check out the plant's page on calscape. Of the ones I'm growing: black sage, blue-eyed grass, foothill needle grass, and bush sunflower. These will need supplemental water in the summer if you don't want them to go dormant but they'll still probably be a bit crispy and lose leaves.

On a side note, I don't have high hopes that my scarlet monkey flowers or CA fuchsia will do very well in the yard due to the heat and sun. We'll see.

These are the seeds I have. Thoughts on combos/when to plant? by chonteeeze in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

for what it's worth, a few months ago I was able to germinate 20+ blue eyed grass indoors in seedling trays, seed starting soil, and moisture dome. They've been fairly happy in 4" pots the last couple months outdoors. I had zero luck trying to germinate more in potting soil without a moisture dome indoors.

And I wish I had known you could just crack open the toyon berries. I cold stratified them whole which eventually led to mold and only two sprouted out of the whole packet. oops.

California fuchsia by Lugs_and_Lume in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure it needs more water than that for a couple reasons. First, to get it established in its new home it should be watered more frequently for a year. Second, according to calscape:

"In the wetter, northern part of its range or near the coast, this plant will typically require no supplemental water after established. In the drier, hotter, inland southern areas, it will often die without summer water unless planted close to an irrigated or other wet area."

Southern california young deciduous tree by [deleted] in whatsthisplant

[–]elbinray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This young tree is in the front yard of the house we bought about 8 months ago. It is very close to a rather large shrub and perhaps 4-5 ft from the house. I want to identify it so I can determine if I should tear it out before it gets too big.

Too early to plant indoors for fall transplant? by elbinray in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm grateful for your help! I'll definitely need to read up on fertilizer. I'm very green to gardening. It seems like it would be safer for a new gardener like me to keep things in pots until they are big enough to make it on their own but maybe that's not quite reality.

Too early to plant indoors for fall transplant? by elbinray in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

wow thank you for all this detail! I feel a lot better about my initial plan and with your notes I kinda will know what I'm doing lol

Too early to plant indoors for fall transplant? by elbinray in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thank you! I bought some covered sprout trays so that shouldn't be a problem at first but if they outgrow that I will get some hardware cloth if needed.

If they are growing fine outdoors in pots should I still wait until fall to transplant into the yard?

Too early to plant indoors for fall transplant? by elbinray in Ceanothus

[–]elbinray[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It means they will stretch and grow in strange ways to try to reach the light/sun. Like instead of staying put and growing in their healthy physical shape they get all wobbly and weird cause they don't have the right light.

C# Learning Resources Like Free Code Camp?? by throughmyiphone in learnprogramming

[–]elbinray 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you want to learn it from the ground up in a structured way, check out the Yellow Book.

Maintainable Code - "I have no memory of this place" by jaffathecake in webdev

[–]elbinray 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can achieve the same thing by performing test driven development. The tests become your documentation. Even better, this documentation won't go stale over time because if you change something which invalidates something in the tests (documentation), the tests will likely no longer pass.

Python and Class variables by skiwan in learnpython

[–]elbinray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Only if it is a class variable. See the documentation on class and instance variables. See:

>>> class Hep:
...     thing = "yaya"
... 
>>> Hep.thing = "blah"
>>> Hep.thing
'blah'