General Guidelines for Planting California Native Drought Tolerant Plants

Plant in existing soil. DO NOT ADD AMENDMENTS. If the soil is brick hard, water the week before you plant or mulch the area a few months before with shredded redwood, shredded cedar, or use arborist chips of chaparral, pine, oak.

DO NOT FERTILIZE or amend the soil.

WEED! Weeds are the antinative.

WEED!!!!!!!, It's easier to get rid of them before you put the plants in. They're your enemy; remove them.(Any way you can that fits your particular situation. We have used post-emergent herbicides, shovels, tractors, and hand weeding.) DO NOT TILL or RIP the soil. Do not remove the weeds with tools unless you're going to plant or mulch. Disturbance favors weeds. Weeds favor weeds. Weed control is always the lesser of evil. Generally the weeds are more evil than the herbicides.

Remove the weed debris and put it in your compost pile, trash, or whatever, but do not use it on our plants. Remove the evil nasties.

Dig the holes about the size of the root ball or a little bigger. Don't dig holes smaller than the plant and rip off half the root ball or try to stuff it in the hole anyway (watch the lazy ones; they'll do this every time). Do not dig a huge hole for a small plant. Ground will settle; and plant will be below ground level and drown during the winter.

Use your body weight to push the shovel into the soil. Use the shovel handle as a lever. It's amazing to see a landscape crew working where half the guys do not know how to use a shovel. A gallon plant is only 6 inches or so across, see if you can find a 7-8 inch shovel, dig it! Do not try to dig holes with a trenching shovel, you'll break an ankle.

Scrape one finger along the edge of the root ball to make sure the roots are not coiled. Generally, if you have to cut the pot, the

plant is pot bound. If you tear up the root mass the plant will likely die, and if the root ball falls away more than 20-30% the plant may die. (Many of the riparian species are exceptions.) Give the plant more water if you did a no-no. If you do not run your finger along the edge the plant will have problems later as the roots will be coiled into a gnarled mass.

Use Mulch. Either place it by hand, with wheelbarrow or tractor on top of the ground around the plant.

Do not till the mulch into the soil!!!!!!!! Use between 1-4 inches organic mulch, 6 inch or larger rocks/boulders, or a combination of the two (see chart)

It is important to recognize that desert and prairie plants want rock or boulder mulch, chaparral and woodland plants want tree mulch mixed with boulders(or large rocks), conifers want tree mulch. Vegetables and English Garden types hate mulch.

Water the first time to fill any soil voids and to rehydrate the soil. If the soil is dry, apply as much as 30 gallons. Then water with a sprinkler for up to 24 hours.
Do not directly water the crown get wet after the first year. Overhead water is ok, putting the hose down next to the plant is not. No drip(see drip section.) Usually,(always exceptions), you can water as much as you wish, as long as you do not put the hose down.

For the first year: Check the soil under the mulch (dig down one inch to two inches ) every week to two weeks. If soil is moist, do not water. If soil is dry, water thoroughly with four plus gallons of water. (Some sites may not need any watering.)

Second year and succeeding years: If the plant originated from an area of higher rainfall than your area, water extra from November to March. If the plant originated from a community that receives fog drip in the summer you will also need to do some light sprinkling during the summer. If your rainfall is between 12-20 inches and coastal you should be ok, if above 20 inches in areas that regularly exceed 100 degrees you should be ok.
If the year is unusually dry, supplemental water can be applied from March through May. (You got 3 inches of rainfall up into February, might be time to water.) Other than that, discontinue watering. Try to maintain the mulch at a depth of two inches and wash the dust off of the foliage once a week or so.
If you want to be 'fire safe'(ha!) and have a lush native garden, wash the foliage off once a week with hose(no setting the hose down) or sprinkler irrigated 5 minutes or so, maybe 10 minutes in Palmdale.

When in doubt, Mulch!