59. The Native Meadow Experiment - Revival
It is late February and here in the San Francisco Bay Area we are getting some early spring weather with flowers and green growth already sprouting up. I’ve had this nice native plant meadow in my backyard for 8 years now and the plantings have gone a bit wild with some of them looking a little depleted by the end of last summer. (you can catch up on the earlier parts of the Meadow Experiment with this blog article, or using the category Experimenting) So in the fall I decided to start the process of giving the whole area a thorough cleanup and working to refresh and revive the garden.
I started last November by cutting back almost every plant to a very short stub and composting the cuttings. Many California native plants, especially the grasses, have evolved with natural fires and animal grazing as part of their life cycle. They go dormant and their leaves turn brown as things dry out in the late summer and fall, and then they sprout again from the base once the rains come in the winter and spring. So cutting them back makes space for the new growth, just like a fire or deer nibbling would. But for me, with no official training in landscape maintenance, it was a bit of an unknown to cut every plant back so dramatically and I’ve been watching carefully over the last few months as things started to grow back.
Having everything cut back and more ground exposed also gave me the opportunity to do some natural “fertilizing”. I raked back the mulch and other debris, pulled some weeds that were sprouting, and then applied a layer of organic compost to all the bare spots between the plants. I only put down about a ½” thick layer but I’ve read that you can do more. Then I covered that with bark mulch and when it rained next the compost started to blend with the existing soil and carry fresh nutrients down to the plant root systems.
The results have been great and you can see in the photos how all of the plants have grown back vigorously, very exciting! I have really enjoyed watching this meadow evolve over time and learned quite a bit!
