39. Native Meadow Experiment - Spring in a Drought

This spring is the 3rd for my experimental native grass meadow, and it has done great, with many nice wildflowers blooming in the last few months.  Now the experimental aspect of the meadow takes a new turn – time to see how these native plants survive the ongoing drought.   (To catch up on the earlier parts of my Meadow Experiment, you can go back to this first blog entry and learn more.)

No More Watering

In the past two summers I have done some supplemental watering of the meadow when things got extremely hot, or a plant was obviously suffering.  After 2 years the conventional wisdom is that these native plants have established good root systems and should be able to survive on their own with only the seasonal rainfall.  But California is in the 4th year of a serious drought, so the rain has been far below average and it is tempting to keep watering things this summer.  In the past few months (February, March & April) I have done just a little spot watering for certain plants that need more moisture.   However, as of May 1st I’ve decided to stop watering it entirely for the summer so we can see how truly drought tolerant the plantings are.

Variations in Water Needs

Looking back on the types of grasses and other plants I selected for this meadow, there are some variations in water needs.  My original plant list shows that some of the grasses I chose are rated as “moderate” water use, and those same grasses are more shade tolerant.  In fact these are the exact grasses that have struggled and several have died.  I think my aggressive trimming in the fall was partly to blame, but at this point all of the Deschampsia caespitosa and about half of the Calamagrostis don’t look like they’re going to come back.  But this is part of the experiment:  I specifically wanted a large variety of grasses to see what would happen and now the meadow is evolving into what works best in my backyard's unique conditions.  More surprising is the loss of one Festuca californica grass and a couple others not doing too well, so we will keep an eye on that.  Of the other plantings, the Armeria maritima are also moderate water use and interestingly the true native species has not survived very well while the white flowering selection ‘Alba’ has done much better.

Wildflowers Going Wild

Another big spring happening in the meadow has been the huge growth spurt for the California Poppies (Eschscholzia californica).  A good third of the meadow area is currently full of flowering Poppies which came entirely from the natural seed production of last year’s plants.  I have had to cut them back to keep them from overwhelming some of the grasses!   Sadly, the Sky Lupine wildflowers did not come back at all this spring.  I’m sure in some cases the Poppies out-competed any new sprouts, but I had hoped to see some of those nice blue flowers returning.  There have also been nice blooms on the Iris (Iris douglasiana), and the white-flowering Yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Into the Long Summer

So on we go into the summer which is promising to be long, hot and dry.  I have high hopes that everything will survive, but it will be interesting to see how things go – I would expect to see some plants go dormant early in the summer, but hopefully all come back with some Fall rain.  As always it will be interesting to see how things evolve!

Update, June 7th:  Many of the grasses are starting to go brown, but several of the other plants are still growing strong and flowering, most notably the Buckwheats (Eriogonum species) and the Yarrow (Achillea species).  Somewhere they are finding enough moisture in the soil to keep them going, impressive!

References:

Handouts and Notes from my attendance at the California Native Grass Association’s workshop:  Using California Native Grasses in the Water-Conserving Landscape www.cnga.org