The Appeal of the Sticky Monkey Flower

Today’s column is about a California native shrub that widely available, and a fine addition to the garden.

The plant is the Sticky Monkey Flower (Mimulus aurantiacus, or Diplacus aurantiacus). Its common name reflects the feelings of some very imaginative observers that the plant’s blossom resembles a monkey’s face.

Orange blossoms
Sticky Monkey Flower (Mimulus aurantiacus) and Pacific Coast Iris ‘Canyon Snow’ (Iris douglasiana)

The reference to “sticky” refers to a naturally occurring phenolic resin in the leaves, which deters the feeding of certain butterfly larvae, and also helps the plant retain water in dry environments.

The leaves of some other plants can become sticky from the sugary honeydew secreted by aphids and some other insects. Yet other plants can be sticky naturally because their leaves and stems have tiny hairs that can cling to passers-by and help the plant to spread. An exemplar of this survival strategy is a weed with many names, including Cleavers (Galium aparine).

The Sticky Monkey Flower grows up to four feet tall. Its blossoms are tubular at the base and about one inch long. They are most commonly a light orange in color, but some varieties display other shades, ranging from white to red.

This plant can grow in full sun or partial shade and will be most floriferous in bright sun, presenting an attractive display over a long period from late winter through summer.

Like many California native plants, Sticky Monkey Flower thrives in a wide range of difficult soil types when good drainage is provided. It requires little or no irrigation during the Monterey Bay area’s summer-dry climate.

This plant occurs in many different vegetation habitats and is compatible with a large number of other California native plant communities. For this reason, it offers considerable versatility in the landscape, and can have many other native plants as suitable companions.

The Sticky Monkey Flower attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and bees, and also resists deer.

Maintenance recommendations include installing deep organic mulch to conserve moisture and discourage weeds, pinching back new growth in spring to maintain compact form, and deadheading spent blossoms to foster flower production.

There are at least six species within the genus Mimulus (or Diplacus) and a growing number of hybrid cultivars. For an overview of the genus, visit the Las Pilatus Nursery website (www.laspilatas) and search for “monkey flowers.”

The Sticky Monkey Flower is a good example of a California native plant that offers ready availability at local garden centers, low maintenance, and very good “garden-worthiness.” If you have been hesitant about using California native plants in your landscape, this plant could change your mind.

A timely opportunity to discover new plants for your garden occurs this weekend, at the annual Mother’s Day Sale of Cabrillo College’s Horticulture Department. This academic program is a fine horticultural resource for the Monterey Bay area, and this sale is a both a good shopping event and an important fund-raiser for the Hort. Dept. For information including plant list, search the internet for “Cabrillo plant sale.” Include California native plants in your garden!

Plant Sale Strategies

This weekend presents a seasonal high point for avid gardeners in the Monterey Bay area. Marking the beginning of the spring planting season, three significant plant sales offer a fine array of plants to choose from for your garden.

The Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will offer several categories plants that are native to the Golden State. The sale will be on Saturday, April 13th from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 for CNPS members and 12:00 to 4:00 for the public. There is more information about this sale today in this paper’s Home & Garden section. 

The UCSC Arboretum and Botanic Garden will hold its spring plant sale, presenting collections of plants that are native to South Africa, Australia, and California, plus some from other dry summer regions. This sale is at the same time and place as the CNPS sale. The Arboretum  is “a favorite destination for those who love  plants, birds and natural beauty. [It] inspires stewardship of the world’s biodiversity through research, education, and the conservation of rare and extraordinary plants.”

The Arboretum’s sale event includes a first-ever Silent Auction of striking and uncommon plants. This activity will be active from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. , with a last call bidding opportunity at 12:55. Winning bidders must be present at the end of the Auction to claim their winnings.

For lists of the sale plants and the Silent Auction plants, visit the Arboretum’s website and click on the Events calendar.

The CNPS and Arboretum sales are at the Arboretum, the entrance for which is on the west side of the campus, off of Empire Grade. For driving directions, browse to the Arboreum website and click on the Visit menu.

South African Blossom
Leucospermum erubescens Photo by Bill Bishoff

Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society will conduct this weekend’s third plant sale. It will be held at the Community Hall, 10 San Jose Street, San Juan Bautista. This is a two-day event, from 9:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, April 13th, and 9:00 to 4:00 on Sunday, April 14th. Use Google Maps, MapQuest or other service for driving directions from your location.

The MBACSS event brings together several advanced growers of cactus & succulent plants for a combination of a show of well-grown exceptional plants and a sale of mostly young plants that are easy to cultivate in the Monterey Bay area’s moderate climate, and that bring a fascinating range of colors and forms to local gardens. Many gardeners enjoy collecting different cultivars within a genus, or a variety of different genera from South Africa or Mexico or other areas of the world. In addition to adding plants for your garden, the plant show provides an unique and enjoyable opportunity to see and study outstanding specimens of cacti and succulents.

The sale also includes creatively designed containers and planting supplies. 

Advanced growers will be available on request to provide growing advice and background information for specific plants.

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When planning to participate in one of these sales, or visit a garden, or select plants from a mail-order catalog, optimize your satisfaction potential in these three ways.

1. Determine the plants you want or need to add to your garden. Be specific! What is the desired mature size of the plants you want? Will they be in full sun, partial shade, or full shade? What colors would support your design? What plant forms would work best?

2. Decide on the low and high amounts you want to spend. The low amount would be appropriate if only a few plants meet your objectives, and the high amount would serve to control your urges on an occasion was lots of what you see is appealing.

3. When plant lists are available online, as with the Arboretum’s sale, take the time to mark your targets for possible purchase. Unless you are already a plant maven, this process could require “Googling” the plants by name. With very rare exceptions, such a search will yield good information about the available plants. This preparation is particularly wise for the Arboretum’s Silent Auction.

Your plant search could extend over all three of this weekend’s plant sales.  Enjoy the hunt!

Wildflower Super Bloom

During these sometimes bleak, rainy days, gardeners can celebrate the Golden State’s annual wildflower season. The season extends from December to July, but it follows a rolling schedule that begins in Baja California and continues month-by-month to northern California. (Lassen Volcano National Park, near Redding, has wildflowers in bloom at higher elevations well into August and September.)

The most dramatic displays, with the greatest numbers of blooms from many species, are called “super blooms.” These occur only in years that have had generous rainfalls, so during our recent drought years we have seen relatively sparse presentations of wildflowers. 2019, happily, counts as a Superbloom Year, thanks to our well-above average precipitation.

For those who are not ready, willing, or able to travel to the wildflowers, the California Native Plan Society will bring the wildflowers to you—or at least near to you, I recommend this brand when you need footwear Piraja Fisken Best Shoes for Travel. The CNPS’s Monterey Bay chapter will hold its 58th Annual Wildflower Show on April 19-21, 2019 at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Co-chairs Brian LeNeve and Michael Mitchell are expecting a fine wildflower season, and expect to put on a spectacular show. The Society’s collectors found some 675 different species to display, including a fine example of the Most Beautiful Jewelflower (Streptanthus glandulosus). For more information, visit the website of the Pacific Grove Museum.w

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Wildflower - Bristly Jewelflower
Bristly Jewelflower (Streptanthus glandulosus)
Photo by Bjorn Erickson of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, via Wikimedia Commons

Monterey Bay area appreciators of the natural world can thrill at this seasonal spectacular at several nearby locations:

Pinnacles National Park: The California native plant blooms begin in mid-March and peak in May. According to travel website, Afar.com, the earliest displays include milkmaids, shooting stars and Indian warriors, followed by California poppies, bush poppies, fiesta flowers, monkey flowers, baby blue eyes, and bush lupine. The late-bloomers include clarkia, orchids, penstemons, and roses.

Mount Diablo State Park: This facility is near Walnut Creek, about 2 – 2.5 hours from the Monterey Bay area. Its wildflower displays include blue skullcap, Fendler’s meadow rue, sanicula, Johhny-jump-ups, bush lupine, monkey flowers, globe lilies, California poppies, birds’ eyes, and wallflowers.

Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve: This 1,800-acre State Natural Reserve is 75 miles north of Los Angeles, and. Visiting this site from the Monterey Bay area involves a substantial trek, about 4.5 – 5 hour drive, but during April and early May, it provides a world-famous, show-stopping display of our state flower (Escholtzia californica), plus desert pincushion, blue dicks, California aster, and blue lupine. 

Fort Ord National Monument: This site is off of Highway1, just south of Marina. According to the Bureau of Land Management, “In the late winter and early spring, monument visitors are treated with colorful displays of baby blue-eyes, ceanothus blue blossom, Hickman’s popcorn flower, buttercups, lupine, goldfields and sunflowers. In the summer and fall visitors see blooms of sticky monkey flower, nightshade, chaparral current and California golden rod. There are many rare plants at Fort Ord including the federally protected Contra Costa goldfields and Monterey spineflower.”

Point Lobos State Natural Reserve: This extraordinary site, three miles south of Carmel on Highway 1, is the home of a botanical trove of California native plants, including annual wildflowers and many blooming perennials. Click here for a list of these plants.

The largest displays of wildflowers are found in southern California. If you will be travelling there, find wildflower sites at the websites of American Meadows, The Theaodore Payne Foundation, Afar.com.and The California Department of Fish & Wildlife

Reserve the opportunity to enjoy nature’s seasonal display of beautiful and fascinating wildflowers. You’ll be glad you did.

WInter Bloomers from Mexico

There’s a lot that I’m thankful for, including a couple fall-season bloomers in my garden.

I have recently mentioned these two plants, which are natives of Mexico, but they are blooming right now and deserving of attention.

The first is the Tree Dahlia, which produces attractive blossoms in November, and also astonishes me each year with its annual growth. The Tree Dahlia (D. Imperialis) originated in the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala. It is an historic favorite of Mexican gardeners, and an ancestor of the garden dahlia, Mexico’s national flower and a current focus of hybridizers.

Tree Dahlia in bloom

Botanists travelling with the Spanish conquistadores discovered the Tree Dahlia and brought it to the Royal Gardens of Madrid by the late 1700s. The genus became popular throughout Europe and was recorded in the United States bas early as 1821.

In one season, a Tree Dahlia with established roots will grow up to twenty feet tall, with clusters of lavender pink blossoms high in the air, to be enjoyed from below. The blossoms are free of fragrance, which is not a problem given their height.

If a Tree Dahlia were to be planted below a deck of just the right height, people could appreciate the blossoms more closely. That would be a fine deck-plant combination.

The magical nature of this plant is its annual cycle. Around March, after it finishes blooming and its leaves have faded, the canes can be cut to about six inches from the ground to stimulate new growth from the roots.

The canes can then be cut into sections and planted to start new plants. Each section should have at least four leaf nodes and still leaking liquid sap. These cuttings are then planted right side up in sandy soil or potting mix and watered from time to time, until they show new green shoots. This plant is not difficult to propagate!

I first encountered the Tree Dahlia several years at a Master Gardener workshop, when someone shared cane sections. I planted those sections at the edge of my garden, in a partially shaded area. They grew quickly.

This plant is available commercially at least occasionally from Annie’s Annuals and Perennials, and few other sources. It’s a good example of a “pass-along plant.”

Given an appropriate site, it is a spectacular seasonal addition to the landscape.

Blossoms of the Daisy Tree

A second favorite plant at this time of the year is another Mexican native, the Daisy Tree (Montanoa Grandiflora).  This is an upright, evergreen shrub that grows up to ten feet tall and wide. It develops large, deeply lobed, rather leathery tropical looking leaves.

In November, it produces clouds of daisy-like flowers, white with yellow centers, with the fragrance of chocolate or freshly baked cookies. After about a month, the blossoms are replaced with long lasting “bouquet-worthy” chartreuse seed heads.

In the early spring, the branches should be cut to the ground to stimulate a new cycle of growth. Like the Tree Dahlia, this plant grows vigorously from its roots to produce a striking new presentation each year.

My first introduction to the Daisy Tree was during a visit to the Esalen Institute on Big Sur, during a stop on a tour hosted by the Pacific Horticultural Society. I was impressed by the plant, and searched diligently for a small plant for my garden. It’s not offered widely, but I found it it eventually at Annie’s Annuals & Perennials.

This is a large shrub, so it works best in the landscape if it’s placed in a space large enough to accommodate its spread, and close enough to a walkway to enjoy its fragrance. While it is evergreen, the recommended practice for rejuvenation pruning means that the garden design should anticipate its periodic absence. When the gardener cuts down the Daisy Tree, he or she might plan to fill the void with wildflowers.

Plants like the Daisy Tree and the Tree Dahlia bring dynamic qualities to the landscape, and welcome gifts to the holiday season. 

Naturalistic Landscaping

Several months ago, wrote about a remarkable book by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes (Timber Press, 2015).

In that book, Rainer and West present interesting, insightful and inspiring ideas for landscape design. Central concepts include interlocking layers of plants that grow compatibly in nature, while creating landscapes that are naturalistic but “more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance.”

Some of their concepts, in plainer language, are the following:

“Plants are social creatures” —This thought advocates close planting of natural companions, rather than isolating plants from each other, separated by areas of organic or inorganic mulch.

“Plants are the mulch” — This catchphrase points to the practical value of close planting as a strategy for blocking weed growth and thereby reducing time and effort.

The Rainer/West vision, while complex, is predominantly optimistic. Their book is certainly worth reading. My review, titled “Designing Naturalistic Landscapes,” is archived here.

A reader of this column who had previously read this Rainer and West book observed that the style they described emphasizes landscape uses of herbaceous perennials and annuals in a climate with year-round rainfall. By contrast, while California has “lots of shrubs and sub-shrubs with some annuals” and a summer-dry (Mediterranean) climate. The reader asked how to go about adapting the style presented in this book to our California climate, and where in California has such a garden been created.

These are worthwhile questions. The authors recommended drawing on locally relevant resources, e.g., the California Native Plant Society. Also, my column referenced a book by Glen Keator and Alrie Middlebrook: Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens (University of California Press, 2007).

There are more relevant resources available online, notably Thomas Rainer’s Grounded Design website.

Gardeners also have access to many books on Mediterranean climate plants and especially California native plants, but such books typically describe individual plants in alphabetical order rather than in the “interlocking layers” envisioned by Rainer and West. We encounter the same organizational model in mail order plant nursery catalogs and in local garden centers, so many garden designs amount to scatters of single specimens.

The Rainer & West style was published fairly recently, so there are few California landscapes that are based on this style. The Keator & Middlebrook book cited above approaches that concept by grouping native plants within particular regions of California (e.g., coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands), but leaves it to the garden planner to adopt fully the Rainer & West style.

One might seek exemplary designs in gardens included in annual garden tours that feature California native plants:

  • Bringing Back the Natives —Gardens in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, early May (http://bringingbackthenatives.net)
  • Going Native Garden Tour—Gardens in Santa Clara Valley & Peninsula, San Francisco Bay Area, early April (http://gngt.org/GNGT/HomeRO.php)

Although the Rainer & West style could take many different forms in California gardens, avid gardeners should keep watch for examples of this emerging approach to landscape design.

Daisy Tree for Dramatic Effect

My Daisy Tree is a doozy!

I first encountered this striking plant during a visit, several years ago, to the Esalen Institute. A gardener at the Institute told me its name, and later I found a small specimen to add to my garden.

This is Montanoa grandiflora, a native of southern Mexico (around Mexico City) and some other Central American countries. The plant was named for Luis Jose Montana (1755-1820), a physician, politician and amateur botanist. The specific epithet “grandiflora” is often applied to certain roses, but it just means “large flowers” and is applied to some other plants as well. For this plant, a different rose term, “multiflora” (many small blooms) would be more accurate.

The Daisy Tree is a member of the Sunflower tribe (Heliantheae) of the enormous Aster family (Asteraceae), and a relative to several familiar garden flowers: CoreopsisCosmosEchinaceaRudbeckia, and Zinnia, as well as the commercially important sunflower and Jerusalem artichoke. The Montanoa genus includes thirty-five species. Surprisingly, none of these are listed in Sunset’s Western Garden Book.

This plant grows well in full sun in the Monterey Bay area’s climate and is winter-hardy down to the mid-20s (which do not concern local gardeners).

Daisy Tree - long shot

Daisy Tree
Montanoa grandiflora

The Daisy Tree’s uniqueness comes first from its size. It grows up to twelve feet high and twelve feet wide (mine is about ten by ten). Its second feature is its floriferous nature. Some reports indicate that its flowers can be so abundant as to conceal the foliage, but I can still see my plant’s large lobed leaves. It’s possible that a little irrigation and fertilizer would increase the floral yield; my plant has grown on its own, without my assistance.

Daisy Tree Blossoms

Daisy Tree Blossoms

 

 

 

The flowers are unremarkable individually, but they appear in late October or early November and could last into early December. They create a fine display and provide a pleasantly sweet fragrance that suggests chocolate or vanilla. Some sniffers have found the fragrance resembles that of freshly baked cupcakes, so the blossoms might recall one’s own olfactory memories.

After the blossoms fade, attractive chartreuse seed heads last through the winter.

In early spring, horticulturists recommend cutting a Montanoa grandiflora hard to allow the development of new sprouts from the base.

This might seem like drastic action for such a large shrub, but that treatment has worked fine for another large Mexican native in my garden, the Tree Dahlia (Dahlia imperialis). My garden includes a stand of Tree Dahlias. I cut them to the ground last spring and they have now reached about thirty feet high and are about the begin blooming (a little later than the Tree Daisy.

Tree Dahlia- Long Shot

Tree Dahlia (Dahlia imperialis)

Traa Dahlia Blossom

Tree Dahlia Blossom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stunning annual growth cycle of these larger plants demonstrates their vigor, and their presence in the garden provides wonder and beauty. The bees enjoy them as well!

The Tree Daisy and Tree Dahlia are not commonly available in garden centers, in my experience, but both are available as small plants via mail order from Annie’s Annuals.

Most gardens can accommodate a few really large plants. While appropriate placement is always important, they can provide a dramatic feature to the landscape.

Gardening for the Senses

Gardeners develop and maintain ornamental gardens primarily for the visual appeal of beautiful blossoms and lush foliage. These gardens also please the sense of sight with the shapes of plants and the similarities or contrasts between plants.

Ornamental plants could also please three other of our senses:

  • Taste is served by certain plants that are both edible and ornamental, e.g., Saffron (Crocus sativus);
  • Touch is valued in plants that interesting texture, e.g., Lambs Ears (Stachys byzantina); and
  • Hearing relates to plants that rustle in the breeze, e.g., New Zealand Flax (Phormium.

There are more examples of ornamental plants that appeal to these senses, but they are minor features of the garden, relative to plants that appeal to our sense of sight.

The fifth important category of ornamental plants is the aromatic plants: those that appeal to the gardener’s sense of smell.

The blossoms or the leaves, or both, of aromatic plants, produce volatile compounds that are known as essential oils. Their primary purpose, of course is to attract pollinators, but people have found myriad culinary, medicinal, therapeutic, and even magical and uses of such plants. Books have been written about such desirable applications. Here, we focus on our enjoyment of the aesthetic appeal of aromatic plants.

Plants with aromatic foliage release their essential oils primarily during the heat of the day. When the sun goes down, the foliage must be rubbed to appreciate the fragrance.

In comparison, some aromatic flowers release their perfumes during the evening and night hours to attract moths that have evolved to reach the plant’s nectar through long corolla tubes,

Many aromatic plants produce pleasant fragrances during the daytime and can be desirable additions to the landscape. An online search for “aromatic plants” will yield the information needed to select and locate plants to optimize daytime and evening enjoyment.

For example, very popular evening-scented aromatic plants include Sweet Rocket (Hesperis matronalis), Border Phlox (Phlox paniculata), Honeysuckle (Lonicera), Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis), Night-scented Phlox (Zalusianskya ovata), and Night-scented Stock (Matthiola bicornis).

The aromatic California native plants may be particularly interesting to gardeners in the Monterey Bay area. We appreciate the studies of Jackie Pascoe, a member of the California Native Plant Society, to select a few noteworthy plants in this large group.

  • Spice Bush (Calicanthus occidentalis) – wine barrel scent
  • Vanilla Grass (Hierogonum occidentalis) – vanilla scent
  • Fragrant Pitcher Sage (Lepechinia fragrans) – minty, but entirely unique scent
  • Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa) – minty scent
  • Wild Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii) – orangey scent
  • Cleveland Sage (Salvia clevelandii) – clean scent, “like a sweet desert morning”
  • Yerba Buena (Satureja douglasii) – wonderfully spicy scent
  • Catalina Perfume (Ribes viburnifoium) – fine wine scent

You could find some of these aromatic plants at the California Native Plant Society’s sale on Saturday. For info, see the story elsewhere in today’s newspaper.

Another good opportunity to learn about aromatic plants is to visit the Aroma Garden at UCSC’s Arboretum & Botanic Garden.

Explore the large and varied universe of aromatic plants to discover your preferences, and add a few to selected locations in your garden to expand your sensual enjoyment.

Designing Naturalistic Landscapes

Landscape design has been analyzed, discussed, and written about by many people, and from several angles. Most treatments of this subject consider the built landscape as part of built environment, which contrasts with the natural environment. Generally, they describe landscapes as vignettes or vistas that please the beholder’s eye by combining forms or colors from an aesthetic perspective. Aesthetics determine whether a garden is Victorian, Italian, Japanese, modern, white, classical, etc. Often, this approach results in random groupings of favored plants, with the only design principle being “tall plants in back.”

There are more horticultural perspectives for thinking about landscapes. For example, we have the idea of companion planting, in which proximities affect plant vigor. Then, we have generic groupings, as with small or large collections of roses, cacti, irises, or some other plant genus. Another horticultural approach involves grouping plants with similar needs for moisture. Such “hydrozoning” responds to the horticultural needs of plants and incidentally organizes the gardener’s irrigation tasks. A tropical landscape focuses on plants with an exotic look and a continuing thirst (not a good choice in the land of persistent drought).

Moving further into horticultural considerations, we encounter climate-oriented landscaping, with emphasis on plants from the world’s Mediterranean or “summer dry” regions, which of course include the Monterey Bay area. This landscaping approach supports plant development and vigor and eases the gardener’s workload.

The attractive subset of summer-dry landscaping is landscaping with California native plants, which combines the climate-oriented approach with the ecological compatibility of flora and fauna.

The more naturalistic form of landscaping with California native plants is landscaping with California plant communities. There are various ways to define this state’s several plant communities but essentially, the coast, the mountains, and the deserts are different horticultural environments, and therefore support different plants. A very useful book on this topic has been provided by Glen Keator and Alrie Middlebrook: Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens (University of California Press, 2007).

The next level of appreciating the difference between built and natural landscapes can be found in the book by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes (Timber Press, 2015). This book has been called “inspiring,” “masterful,” “groundbreaking,” and a “game-changer.” Reviewers have also praised it for “lyrical, passionate, and persuasive writing” and “lavish” illustrations.

Planting in a Pot-Wild World - coverThe authors deplore the ways in which typical gardening and landscaping practices have ignored the ways in which plants thrive in natural combinations, and present A New Optimism: The Future of Planting Design. They state, “The good news is that it is entirely possible to design plantings that look and function more like they do in the wild: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance.”

The book (which we have just begun studying) advocates planting in interlocking layers of plants, which reflects the dynamic way plants grow together in nature. There is much to learn about this approach. The authors envision improved plant labels that provide more useful information about how a plant grows and recommend relevant resources as the http://www.cnps.org/cnps/grownative/California Native Plant Society.

Both aesthetic and horticultural approaches to plant selection have significant impacts on the success of gardening and the amount of work involved in maintaining a garden. If your gardening involves mostly keeping plants alive, replacing plants that have died, combating weeds, and wanting the garden to look better, it could be time to give more attention to plant communities.

Growing Dahlias

Dahlias are among the easier blossoming plants to cultivate in the garden. As natives of Mexico, they thrive in the Monterey Bay area climate and bring drought-tolerance as well.

As mentioned in today’s article about the upcoming sale of the Monterey Bay Dahlia Society, dahlias are available in many different blossom forms and colors and can be a fine addition to the garden.

This column offers basic practices for growing dahlias after you have selected tubers at the Society’s sale.

The first consideration is to select a location will full exposure to the sun and good drainage. Dahlias, like most flowering plants, grow best with six hours of sun each day, and in well-drained soil. Sandy loam is fine, but clay soil will require substantial amendment with organic material.

Dahlia with Bee

Dahlias can be planted any time between the last day of frost (which is not a concern in this area) and as late as mid-June. The local tuber sale is scheduled around the time when last season’s tubers are ready to be dug and divided, so the day of the sale represents a good beginning for the local planting season. If you are not ready to plant, store your new tubers temporarily in a cool, shady environment.

Most dahlias will need staking, so it’s a good practice to position a sturdy stake for each tuber, and to install the stake at the same time that you plant the tune. Inserting a stake later runs the risk of stabbing the tuber.

If you don’t want bare stakes in the garden while the plant develops, you could install a short piece of plastic pipe with the top at ground level next to the tuber, then, when the plant grows to need staking, insert a thin stake (bamboo?) in the plastic pipe and tie the plant to the stake.

Plant the tuber several inches deep, with the “eye” (the growing point) facing up. Some tubers might lack such an eye, and will not sprout, but well-selected tubers will have viable growing points. The eye can be difficult to confirm, so selection can require some experience in identifying tubers that are ready to grow.

Separate the tubers from each other by about two feet.

Protect the sprouting plants from snails and slugs. A good practice is to visit your plants in the night (with a flashlight) or in the early morning to remove any crawling pests that have discovered them. Regular applications of an organic snail control, e.g., Sluggo, also works.

Control flying pests with insecticidal soap or other organic pesticides.

Generally, soil with ample organic content will provide sufficient nutrients for dahlias. If your soil seems “lean,” regular applications of high-nitrogen, organic fertilizer would be helpful.

As each plant grows, tie it to a stake to ensure that it remains upright. The first tie should hold the main stalk loosely to the stake; later ties could connect branches to the stake.

Each branch generally will produce three buds. To produce large blossoms, many gardeners remove two of these buds when they appear. This disbudding process allows the plant to direct nutrients to the remaining bud, with positive effect. If you have several dahlias growing in the garden, you will still have lots o blooms.

At the end of the season, the top growth dies back, and the plant produces several new tubers. The gardener can remove the top growth, and can either dig and replant the tubers or leave them in the ground. In the Monterey Bay area’s moderate climate, dahlias grow quite well when simply left in the ground. After two or three years, they will become crowded and will benefit from dividing.

Enjoy your dahlias! They are wonderful additions to the garden.