Growing Native Plants from Seed with Julia Michaels

Julia Michaels  0:00  
I think one of the beautiful things about it is sort of giving up your sense of control a little bit. People who are interested in creating nature in their backyards, you kind of have to adjust your expectations. And I think it can be a really, really useful endeavor in this time when there's so many things that feel out of our control to have something that is sort of purposely out of our control a little bit and that we can look at and and learn from and just observe and share observations with other people. So yeah, I think it's psychologically it can be a really nice endeavor.

Michelle Fullner  0:30  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever killed a plant by loving it too much. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today on the show, we're letting go of expectations and embracing the wilder side of gardening because today, we're hearing from Julia Michaels, whose voice you just heard all about growing California native plants from seed, and just get ready because we're tackling so much in this one episode. First, we'll head to headrow Farms, which exclusively grows California native plants to get into where native seed actually comes from, including the ethics of collection in the wild how that wild collected seed can be amplified for restoration, what it's like working with seeds that are not domesticated, and even some genetic considerations. And then in the second segment, we'll dive into how you can grow your own native plants from seed at home, whether you have acres to manage or a little tiny pot on your balcony, even if you've never grown or never successfully grown a plant in your life. This segment is packed with tips on how to get started, which native plants are easiest and most difficult to grow the right season for starting seeds, common mistakes and how to avoid them, places where you can get your native plant seeds and so much more. I want to remind you before we head out to the farm that this is episode 11 out of 12 in season two, so just one more episode in the season after this. After that next one comes out. I'll be traveling around the state to gather interviews for season three, which is already starting to come together in ways I am so excited about. I even just booked a little tiny house in Humboldt County so I can go talk to a bunch of cool people for you up there about some truly iconic California species and ecosystems. And what is the last episode in Season Two going to be about anyway you ask? That one is featuring Miguel orden Jana, the scientist who first discovered the mountain lion p 22. in Griffith Park in the middle of Los Angeles, we'll be talking urban ecology, which of course covers all kinds of cool city dwelling species, including both mountain lions and homosapiens. And Miguel is just a wonderfully thoughtful and insightful human. So make sure you're following Golden State naturalist wherever you're listening to make sure you don't miss that one. I also want to give a big thank you to everyone supporting the show on Patreon for making this work possible. Last month, Golden State naturals became self sustaining, meaning that it now makes as much money as it costs to create which is a huge milestone, y'all and I appreciate every single person who's making it happen by chipping in $4. A month or more. If you want to become part of that community and help more people learn about the ecosystems and organisms all around them while also gaining access to video and audio extras from the episodes and the ability to get your questions asked during interviews. You can join us at www.patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu LL and er Also don't forget to text this episode to the plant parents in your life or the wannabe plant parents are just like anyone who likes biodiversity and flowers and birdsong and springtime sharing episodes helps the actual most so thank you if you've ever shared an episode before, it's one of the best ways to support your local indie podcaster. And I know you're out there doing this already because Golden State naturalist has now been played in dozens of countries all around the world, all 50 states and if I'm counting correctly, every city in California except for Amador which is the smallest city in California. So if you've got a friend and Amador you know just pass this along. There are some beautiful oak trees out there so they might like the oak episode. Anyway, I am flabbergasted by how far you've helped this podcast go. Thank you. If you want to see pictures and videos that go along with the episodes or my outdoor adventures or what my face looks like, you can follow me at Golden State naturalist on both Instagram and Tiktok and my website is www dot Golden State naturalist.com You can also get yourself a t shirt tank top or sweatshirt with the Golden State naturalist bear and poppies on there. So check out the store via my website if you're looking for wearable merch. But now let's get to the episode. Dr. Julia Michaels is fascinated with the idea that ecological conservation and community development goals can be met through collaboration and education. This idea has brought her to live and work in diverse communities around the world, including Anchorage, Alaska, New Orleans, Louisiana, La Paz, which is in Baja, California, Mexico, and Ecuador. Julia completed her PhD in ecology at the University of California Davis, where she focused her research on strategies for restoring native vernal pool wetlands. After graduating, she joined the faculty at Sacramento State and leader, the biology department at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Back home in California, Julia now loves working at hydro farms, because it is her favorite way to connect with the public about the fascinating world of native plants and to recruit individuals to help us restore native ecosystems, one backyard at a time. So without further ado, let's hear from Julia Michaels on Golden State naturalist.

How many acres do you guys have going right now?

Julia Michaels  6:03  
So it varies. You know, we've had as much as 500. I think we have about 250 to 300 in production right now, you know, it really depends on how many contracts we have how much water is available, but yeah, anywhere between like two and 350 acres, which is pretty much as far as I can see native plants, which is really quite

Michelle Fullner  6:22  
as amazing. Yeah, I met up with Julia on the kind of late summer day. That's a little hard to remember now, after the very cold wet winter we've had here in California, temperatures that day back in September reached 107 degrees at hydro farms, and this was well beyond halfway through the driest year on record here in California. It was so dry in fact, that despite their eight groundwater recharge ponds and multiple bioswales, planted with native sedges and rushes to increase soil saturation, one of hedgerows Wells had just gone dry a day or two before my visit. Part of what caused that is what I think a lot of us would have guessed, which is that not enough rain had fallen directly onto the Valley for where the farm is located. But if you listen to the recent episode about water in the Central Valley, you will know that the lack of surface water and subsequent issues with groundwater are also due to the way that we've changed the hydrology of the whole state largely by constructing dams in the hills and mountains surrounding the Central Valley. And while those dams helped make extensive agriculture in the state possible by controlling exactly when and where water is used, they also change in sometimes altogether stop natural cycles of seasonal flooding, and keep historic wetlands dry in many parts of the Central Valley. There is so much more on all of that in the Central Valley Water episode, so definitely go check that out if you haven't already. But in the case of Winters, California where hedgerow is located. The dam in question is one that I knew as a kid because I grew up near it the Monticello Dam located on the eastern side of Lake Berryessa in Napa County. But

Julia Michaels  8:02  
what happened was when we built that dam, we really reduced the amount of flooding that Buddha Creek, which is the creek that runs through the Berryessa gap and into this area, and no longer was able to flood in the winter. And so this topsoil that's so rich in nutrients, you know, it really developed because of that flooding regime. And as we cut off this valley from its freshwater source, we're sort of stuck with the topsoil that we have left. So we really it's important for us to take care of, you know, the topsoil and the groundwater that we have here because we're not getting that recharge that we did prior to the building of that dam.

Michelle Fullner  8:39  
Okay, storytime so you know how I said I grew up near Monticello Dam. Well, when I was seven, my family moved to my great grandpa's property on Monticello road. And he had been there since the 1930s when he was asked to leave San Francisco, which is a different story for a different day. But his arrival in Napa was well before the Monticello Dam was finished in 1957. So when he got there to the hills near what is now Lake Berryessa there was not a lake in various valley, but a town the town of Monticello. And when the dam was being constructed in the town was being vacated and demolished. There was a lot of abandoned debris that had to be moved out things like boards and pieces of corrugated tin and My great grandpa went in and salvaged a bunch of it and used it around his house and property. So when I lived at the ranch as a kid, I was living and playing under the scraps of a disassembled town that had been gone for almost four decades, and Putah Creek which helps Phil Lake Berryessa and then comes out on the eastern side of the Monticello Dam also flows through Winters, California where hydro is located. It just doesn't flood like it used to because so much of that water stays behind in Lake Berryessa. But despite the extreme drought and dry well we still looking at a beautiful field of native mugwort almost ready for harvest and Although there are plants that you often find in the wild around the Sacramento Valley, the way they were growing was not something I had ever seen from these plants.

Julia Michaels  10:08  
You know, you're used to seeing these plants in the wild where they're sort of dispersed at a more naturalistic pattern. But you know, here you're gonna see, it's a fantasy and whole monoculture of mugwort or, you know, two acres just of poppies. It's a really interesting experience to see this something that is so wild, kind of in an agricultural context.

Michelle Fullner  10:32  
And if you've listened to this podcast very much in the past, you know how important native plants are for entire food webs, often beginning after the plants themselves with invertebrates many of them specialist species that only eat or only lay eggs on a particular species of native plant and Julia mentioned that lots of native bees and butterflies, including monarchs make a home at headrow Enjoying the bounty of their favorite plants in that one place. After we've taken a look around the fields Julia took me to meet Alejandro Garcia seed collector and cleaner at headrow to learn where the seeds for those fields come from in the first place. They

Alejandro Garcia  11:08  
say I want this collection is where a para los contratos he recognizes me Yes. Oh

Michelle Fullner  11:14  
hundra handles all the contracts for collecting seed from wildland areas for headrow. He identifies native plants and collects their seed outside of the farm, which is a job that comes with plenty of challenges. CSA

Alejandro Garcia  11:27  
to collect the poquito Yang which has planters Barataria trata de la tiempo. With Allah's mas para pieces,

Michelle Fullner  11:35  
it's a challenge when he sees there are a lot of plants but he's not able to collect much seed and that in those cases they like to return the following season and collected a better time to take care of these plants so they can produce more seed he notes that the challenges always involve getting to know all the different plants better and then there's timing of

Alejandro Garcia  11:53  
course almost as a spoke awareness Salim Mala Mia we always ask for Thomas bn. Salary in Paraguay says we tolerate and Salem we say

Michelle Fullner  12:02  
cut the plant when it's too green and the seed isn't ready yet at the right time the seed comes out well, but if it's too late, the seed is dry.

Limiter so the timing is important and the years weather is important and impacts the timing. But there are also ethical considerations for collecting wildland seeds. Julia sent me hedgerows document on seed collection best practices, which includes things like having all the proper permissions and permits to collect in an area but also taking extra care with sensitive species using species specific collection methods, cleaning and sanitizing tools and boots, which will sound familiar if you listen to the amphibian episode harvesting only 25% of a given species in most cases, and this is wording right from the document using biologically sound approaches for seed collection to prevent over harvest and maintain viability of wild populations of plant species. But even timing, weather and ethics aren't everything in need of consideration when it comes to wildland seed collection. If you think back to the episode on California native plants from earlier this season, you'll remember that California is a biodiversity hotspot, which means there's huge variety in the plants. Alejandro is out collecting every year in 2022. For example, He collected fingerprint, face 56 or 57 species. Alejandro isn't sure how many species he's collected in total in his 23 years at headrow. stainless,

Alejandro Garcia  13:33  
better same time we'll just see.

Michelle Fullner  13:39  
Thomas, he and Manolo Sanchez do most of the collecting, which lasts more than half of the year beginning in February and not wrapping up until September all the hundreds nephews come up from Mexico to help out during the summer months. And if the team isn't collecting seed, you can very likely find them in the barn cleaning it or cleaning seed from the fields of native plants grown right at headrow. But what does cleaning seed mean? Basically, it's getting the seed itself separated from all the other stuff, the general plant debris and even possibly unwanted seeds. Like if there were any weeds popping up in the field at the time of harvest. I'll let Farm Manager Jeff sweeter explain how the seed cleaning machines work. Okay,

so we came inside the barn. And this is where most of the magic happens for cleaning the seeds. Yeah,

Jeff Quiter  14:26  
yeah, so first goes through the scalper and center. So taking out big stems and anything that's smaller than the seed, generally getting everything that's the same size of the seed and separating it out if you go to the next step.

Michelle Fullner  14:45  
So I just have to bust in here to say that these machines look straight up like something out of Dr. Seuss. There are these shimmying drawer looking things stacked on top of each other Everywhere you look there are tubes, conveyor belts spouts, levers And then tubs for collecting the clean seed and multiple big empty Rubbermaid trash cans for collecting the unwanted debris that's been separated from the seat. I'll also post some pictures or videos on social media. So you can see for yourself just in case that didn't make sense. Okay, now that you kind of know what this machine looks like, let's keep following the seed along its journey. And then this is the next step.

Jeff Quiter  15:24  
Yeah, after the sifter and scalper it goes through an elevator event is an intense with separate by length. So the first separator actually has a series of screens, and also separates using air. So it'll suck out the small particles, anything that's lighter than the seed, you can calibrate it to, sometimes to calibrate it too much where it sucks out everything. So

Michelle Fullner  15:55  
how would you want us to be that sweet spot of not picking up the seed, but getting enough of the trash out of the seed? Wow, that's difficult,

Jeff Quiter  16:03  
then they'll still be foreign material mixed in with this stuff. So it'll go to another machine and in den nose, separate by length. So depending on what you're separating out, your clean seed either goes into a hopper, which is inside the intent drum. Or if the seed is long enough to not fit in the indents, it will ride across the bottom, and then be deposited into another elevator or morclean bag. Depending on what the next step would be. In this case, it's being deposited into an elevator and then into a bag. In normal cases, it would be going on to our gravity table, which separates by density using air also. And all these machines have different settings so they can be calibrated in different ways. So

Michelle Fullner  16:55  
and that allows you to adjust for what kind of seed you're working with. Yeah,

Jeff Quiter  16:59  
exactly. And what we're trying to remove, and a lot of these machines that we're using for cleaning, actually all of them are not, we're not designed for native sea. So they're designed for stuff that flows better. So where there would normally be a three inch opening going from one machine to another. Ideally, ours might be twice as big, so six inches, wow, just to make room for everything to flow. And it's also not as heavy so it doesn't flow with gravity as well.

Michelle Fullner  17:24  
So the machines have to be calibrated with these wild seeds in mind. And Jeff has honed that very specialized knowledge over the last 10 years at headrow.

Jeff Quiter  17:33  
It was funny one time because Chris Rose from Solana RCD was here and we were looking at print Delia cam horn feed. And I was mentioning to you have you know, this, this couldn't do cam for him is a lot bigger than it usually looks. And he was like, how would you even know that? It's like, well, the stuff that I know pretty much all that I know.

Speaker 3  17:57  
At this point, you've got like an intuition or a sixth sense about it. I would imagine,

Michelle Fullner  18:01  
it occurs to me that there are not a whole lot of people in the world with the kind of specific expertise held by Jeff Alejandro and Manolo. It has to be developed over years of experience and intentional observation. When working with wild and domesticated seeds and plants, things can vary quite a bit. Let's head back to that field of mugwort. With Julia to hear more about this and return to the police, we started in this cycle we've been exploring of seed collection, cleaning, sowing growth and eventually harvest.

Julia Michaels  18:32  
It's one of the last species we harvest because right now it's you know, September, most of our plants have already been harvested for seed, but you know, we have this beautiful field growing strong, waiting for the seed to ripen. And how do you know when it's ripe, it can be a tricky process, even in an agricultural context, these native plants are so you know, wild still that we have to go out and check constantly. And the ripening is not even even within a single field. So it really is kind of a art, it takes some finesse, one of the things you do is you just kind of grab it, and you just rub it between your hands. And then you look to see if there's any hard seeds. So this one looks like nothing is ripe quite yet. But then if we go over here you can see the sort of lack of consistency across the field. Yeah, this one's way more brown, green. Yeah, and the seed is really tiny. I can show you a bag of it in a moment. But you can start to see some of the teeny

Michelle Fullner  19:29  
little seeds forming tiny black are they almost exploded? Yeah, these

Julia Michaels  19:33  
are some of the smallest seeds that we produce. And I'll show you the variation in size. Some of them are about, you know, as big as a pea, and some of them are so tiny that if you breathe on them the blowing.

Michelle Fullner  19:44  
It occurred to me later that I wanted to know more about the wildness of the seeds. So I emailed Julia to ask if headrow was concerned about the seed slowly becoming domesticated after too much time live in that farm life. Her response was fascinating. So I'm just gonna read it to you. She says, Yes, we're worried about plants domesticating. Over time, if we grow them for too many generations at the farm after collecting them in the wild, the best practice would be to either one, collect a whole bunch of seed from the wild, keep it in cold storage facility where it theoretically never goes bad. And then just draw from that original collection, what we call g zero or generation zero every time we want to plant a field, but we would have to collect a lot of seed for that, or option two, we could go out and collect G zero generation zero seed from the wild every time we want to grow a field. But that is a huge amount of work. And there really isn't a lot of science read practically any science to say how many generations native seed has to grow at a farm before it loses its, quote, wildness. She also said, there's one lady in Germany, who started to do some studies on this, and she included a link to some of that research, which I'll put in the show notes. But as honestly, it is probably very species dependent. So here's her description of what headrow does. In practice, we save seed from our fields and plant again. So the next crop is G one the following G two. But a lot of our species are long lived perennials, so the generations can still be pretty low. Even if the collection is very old. The absolute oldest seed we use to grow at the farm is probably between generation six and generation eight collected almost 20 years ago. Again, we don't really have the science to be sure that eight generations is really going to change the genetics, but we can make an educated guess that GA is probably too long, and we need to recollect those species. So we are recollecting those species from the wild this year to replenish our stock seed for planting. What is super cool about that is that we know exactly where the original seed was collected from 20 years ago. So if this year we go out and recollect seed from that exact same spot, we can compare G zero to G eight seed and actually look at the genetic and morphological differences. This year, we're starting a project with a team of geneticists to compare G zero and g eight seed. So I'm very excited about that. And Julia, keep me posted on what happens with that project. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but don't blow away with the wind like the tiniest mugwort seed. Because so far we've heard about how farming California native seeds works from the brilliant people at headrow. But we still haven't even touched how you can grow your own seed at home and surround yourself with all manner of gorgeous and ecologically beneficial native plants. And really quick before we go, I wanted to let you know that the city nature challenge is right around the corner. So in case you're not familiar with it, the city nature challenge started out as a nature observation competition between San Francisco and Los Angeles but has since expanded to over 400 cities worldwide. All you need to do to participate is to take a picture of any wild plant or animal or evidence of wildlife. So that evidence could be like a feather or a spiderweb or a beaver dam. Then upload your picture to the AI naturalist app. And now you're a participant in this awesome global community science project. The dates for this year CNC are April 28 through May 1 And you can follow the city nature challenge at CIT net challenge so CIT na te challenge on Instagram. There are also local groups that you can follow in some areas. For example, the group where I live in Sacramento is at CNC Sacramento participating in the city nature Challenge is a lot of fun. So download the AI naturalist app and you can even practice making observations now before the challenge begins at the end of April. Okay, now stick around for all kinds of native plant growing goodness, we'll be back in just a moment.

Now, on to the full interview with Julia Michaels, we found a spot to duck in out of the blazing heat. Yes, it's lovely. And I was wondering just kind of how you first became interested in native plants or in growing scene?

Julia Michaels  24:30  
Sure. Well, I think you know, I was I was a really spacey kid growing up and I would do a lot of just sort of wandering around the playground and looking at plants and my pockets were always just full of plant material seeds, etc. And I think as I got older, I kind of honed in more on wildflowers and native plants in particular, but I think I was really scared off at first by all the Latin names and the sort of the actual field of botany. I had a really fun Fantastic ta when I was in school, who made a really good case for why I should sort of double down and learn all the names and actually get to know them better. And she said, You know, when you're getting to know people and you learn their names, sides more meaning to those people, right, like when you know someone's name, they become a more meaningful person to you. And so if you learn the name of plants, they become more meaningful to you. And since plants are everywhere, the world becomes more meaningful to you. And, and it's true, I think, now that I've started to notice more plants and had less what we call plant blindness, you know, I can be stuck in a parking lot and entertain myself by identifying the plants around me. And so yeah, I just found that it continued to bring me a lot of joy and fulfillment. And it's just one of those things, especially plants, you don't have to live in the nicest neighborhood, you don't have to be, you know, next to a national park to have really interesting plant life to discover. So I feel like it's a great way to connect with people about nature, too.

Michelle Fullner  25:59  
That's really cool. I like the idea too, that it's accessible on this very immediate level, no matter kind of where you live, especially fingers crossed cities are doing a little bit more consideration about green space. Oh, certain.

Julia Michaels  26:11  
So the other thing was, I had really terrible eyesight. And so I was like, birds were out, like, I could never, I could never see the birds, they'd be like, Oh, look at that blue bird. And it'd be like that fuzzy.in The distance plan stay where you put them generally. Just go. So I felt like that was, you know, it was my colleague and

Michelle Fullner  26:31  
a lot of sense. Okay. And then thinking about how this all applies. We just did this beautiful farm tour and saw the process on this big scale, right? But like, for somebody who wants to grow some native plants at home from seeds, like why should they grow from seeds? Or in what situations should they grow from seeds, rather than using small plants to start with? Sure,

Julia Michaels  26:51  
I think there are times that are appropriate for both. I think that if you have a very specific spot where you want a very specific plant, for example, you know, I have a strip of soil outside of my house along the pavement that I wanted a Manzanita growing, and it wasn't necessarily the easiest plant to grow from seed, I knew exactly where I wanted it to be. And it was the right time of year to grow a plant from the plug rather than from a seed. So I went out to a nursery and I purchased, you know, one gallon of this Manzanita. However, if you want to do for example, like a strip of all native animal wildflowers, you don't want to go out and have to buy, you know, 40 individual plugs of annual wildflowers, and they grow perfectly fine from seed. And often, those ones tend to have tablets, that will actually not do so well in pots, they they're much better if you put the seed in the ground, and it can stay put where it lives. So depending on the species, and then also depending on the time of year, which we'll get into a little more, you might choose either seeds, or I say plugs. But I mean, you know, a live plant. Right? Right. So it's very contextual. It's very connection, it

Michelle Fullner  28:03  
helps if you learn a little bit about each type of plant. Exactly. And if people are like, what, that's a lot, and I don't know about the plants, like where can they look to maybe start learning some of that stuff. Sure.

Julia Michaels  28:12  
There's so many great resources. Now I'm so happy that you know, there's all these tools. I think bloom California is a CNPs project where you actually can find a local nursery that has signed up to be a part of this program. And they'll have a special native section and they'll have done some training to help people who come in looking for natives. And so that's all over California, which is great. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  28:37  
Bloom California is an amazing resource. I'm going to link it in the show notes for you, but the URL is bloom california.org/nurseries. And when you go there, it's got a map of the entire state of California and you can see where geographically all of these nurseries are located that carry different native plants. I will say The only bummer is that there aren't a ton of options in far northern California and sort of south eastern California also, but if you're along the central to southern coast or Sacramento Valley or even along this here in Nevada Mountains, there's quite a few options for native plant nurseries. And what's great about going in person is that I find it very helpful to have a real human explain things to me. So there's a good chance if you actually go to one of these nurseries in person, somebody knowledgeable will be able to help you out concerning plants that are a good fit for you in your area. Okay, and Julie has got more resources for us.

Julia Michaels  29:35  
And then if you're trying to do a little bit more DIY, or you're often the nurseries, they just carry live plants. But if you're thinking about seed, Cal scape is a really fantastic website. There's Cal flora and Cal scape. Cal flora is a little bit more. It has more of a botany perspective where it's you know, maybe more people interested in finding native plants growing in the wild and Cal scape is really dedicated to Landscaping. So they'll tell you all the different landscape requirements. The other place I would recommend looking is Facebook. I know a lot of us, you know, younger folks have moved on from Facebook, but I still have one because there are some fantastic groups of people who help each other out. And you can ask really specific questions. You can say I am, you know, a gardener living in Elk Grove, and I am interested in you know, implanting a Sienna with this plant and a California lilac. Which species? Do you all recommend? oh nine, there will most likely be someone who has an answer for you. So yeah, there's all these different native wildlife groups, and you just kind of go search for your area.

Michelle Fullner  30:39  
Nice. And and that actually leads perfectly into my next question, because one of my listeners, the listener was be IB, she was wondering where people can get seed because she's had some struggle of finding like, where do I source native seeds? How do I know it's a good source? Like all of all of those questions, and, and I think over the years, it hasn't always been super accessible. Maybe that's changing now. Yeah, I

Julia Michaels  31:00  
think that it's hard to find commercially available native seed in quantities that often, a homeowner might want it. Right, for example, headrow, we try really hard to make our seat available to everybody. And if you call and you want enough seed to, you know, just plant out your front lawn with some native grasses, and we'll certainly make that happen. But it can be a little bit more difficult than just going to your local Ace Hardware and picking up a bag of seed. There's a couple different companies. I mean, there's headrow, there's s&s see down in Southern California, there's Pacific cosied, which is a little closer to the Bay Area. And then there's some of the retail companies like Larner seeds that you can contact, and it's changing right now. I mean, I know Pacific Coast used to have a retail brand like the seed, I just give you a little sample of that we would sell to nurseries, we don't have that right now. So hopefully someone else is filling that gap. So yeah, and I think the other thing that's really great are seed shares. So you know, if you go onto those Facebook groups, a lot of times someone will say, you know, man, my buckwheat is going wild, I have a whole bag of seeds. Does anybody want to swap those? For some California fuchsia seed? So it's kind of fun. You can some make some friends? Bartering? Oh, yeah. That's

Michelle Fullner  32:16  
cool. And, you know, kind of along those lines, too. I was wondering about how do you know, the ethics? If you were just taking a walk in the woods? What are the ethics of collecting seed? Like when do you know if that's okay? Or how much to take? Or any of that?

Julia Michaels  32:30  
I would say the general rule is, it's not okay. If you don't know, if it's not private land that you know, the owner of or are the owner of, it's not okay to collect native seed, just because there's so many reasons that we can, can or can't get into, depending on our time. But, you know, I think there's ethical from an environmental standpoint, also, from a cultural standpoint, a lot of plants are used by indigenous people, and we need to save the seeds for them and those populations. But I think, you know, a lot of times people have native plants growing in their gardens, and it's more than acceptable to, you know, hit up your neighbor and say, Hey, I noticed that you have some really great monkey flower. Would you mind if I grabbed a few seed pots? The other great thing is, you know, you only need a couple seed pods to start your own native garden. So it's really not a big quantity.

Michelle Fullner  33:23  
That's true. Yeah. And I mean, you'd have to have a really big yard to need. Yeah. Because each plant probably is producing quite a bit more than it would sprout if it just fell on the ground. Oh, yeah, absolutely. producing an excess. And how can people make sure because California is huge, and we have so many bio regions? How can people make sure that they're growing the right thing for their region? Would that go back to using like bloom or Cal scape? Is that what you'd recommend? Yeah, Cal

Julia Michaels  33:48  
scape is great. And I think also Cal Florida has a tool called what grows here. So you can literally zoom in to your area, and then you can filter by okay, I'm interested in what grasses grow here, or what wildflowers grow here and it'll give you a list of you know, regionally appropriate species. Bloom also helps you with that as well, because you're right, California is huge. And so you know, I was just having even within California some natives are considered invasive in other areas. Wow. So I was just having a conversation about was a Lupin species that grows in on the coasts near Point Reyes. And that same Lupin up in humble is considered an invasive,

Michelle Fullner  34:29  
even though they're both like coastal California and just ones halfway up the coast in one's own

Julia Michaels  34:35  
native range really stops around Tomales Bay, I believe it's lupinus Arborea so I would just have to double check that but it's a yellow Lupin coastal Lupin and yeah, so it grows, it doesn't take over in the conditions, you know, kind of south of Tomales Bay, but up in you know, really northern coastal California, it, it really outcompetes a lot of the other species and has been sort of, I mean, invasive is such a subjective term, but it's considered The nuisance species, even though it is native to the state of California, so

Michelle Fullner  35:03  
do a little bit of research before you start planting, go check it out on Cal scape and bloom.

Julia Michaels  35:09  
Exactly cool. I meant

Michelle Fullner  35:10  
to say Cal scape and Cal flora, which I will of course link in the show notes. But of course, you can also use Bloom to find a native plant nursery and connect with someone who works there.

Julia Michaels  35:21  
And it can be fun. I mean, it's not always fun, but go into it with the attitude of learning and know that every single person who has you know, planted natives in their yards has gone through a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure. And that's another reason why I think it's really great to try and find those communities of people in your area. So you can share in those successes and failures together. Sure,

Michelle Fullner  35:42  
yeah, another and then it's not just plugging your zip code into something, it's actually talking to someone who had that experience. exhaustively in that zip code. Yes, one of my listeners listener turned friend, who has this urban farm, it's called Find out farms, and they actually grow like some small batches of native plants. But he was wondering about resources for knowing when to plant what plants because, you know, with garden plants, there's all these resources online, you can find, like, you know, in March you plant carrots or whatever making that up. But you know, so with native plants, how do you know,

Julia Michaels  36:18  
I mean, in general, the rule is you can seed in the fall. And then you can plant live plants from the fall through the spring,

Michelle Fullner  36:27  
I realized that I'm making a whole episode about growing native plants from seed in a window when you should not be starting seeds, unless in this really rainy year, like maybe you could get away with it if you started them right now when this episode comes out. But this was actually a really intentional choice. Because I think that when all of the native wildflowers are blooming, that is the best time to get inspired. So the best thing you can do right now is walk around and look at all the different beautiful native wildflowers that are blooming, learn about those, identify them, figure out which ones you want to put in your yard next year, you can purchase seed anytime between now and when it's ready to plant. And in the meantime, if you get going on it soon, you can even get some little native plants in the ground right now. Okay,

Julia Michaels  37:14  
so that's kind of the general rule within that refining. Like, you know, when to plant what specific plants, that's going to be a really regionally dependent thing. I think this is a farm in Sacramento, right? Yeah, I've heard of them. So there's a Sacramento native wildlife gardening Facebook group, which talks a lot about, you know, within that area when the best time to plant is, but I would say Yeah, go for seeding, we generally recommend that you see from September through November, and then that's sort of our first planting window. And then our second planting window would be a little bit later. Because sometimes there's a gap in the rains between the sort of early winter and later winter. So September through November is our first window and then late January through early February is another really good

Michelle Fullner  38:02  
time. And you can see that, okay, so you can see it in either window, right.

Julia Michaels  38:05  
But the month of sort of December and early January can be a little sketchy, because plants can germinate, but without rain to sort of sustain them, they can then kind of die off. So we need that either. You know, you get started early, and you get those roots down. And some plants like poppies will actually perennials. So they will if you plant them in that early window, they'll develop roots that are deep enough that they can actually survive for multiple seasons, even though they're technically annuals. That's awesome. But then if you plant them late January through early February, they kind of act more like annuals.

Michelle Fullner  38:37  
Okay, cool. And you know, you're talking a lot about, like the rainfall and the natural water sources, but like, what if you're planting? How should you care for that? Should you be going out and watering those seeds? Or should you just be like, Hey, let's let the rains

Julia Michaels  38:48  
take care of it, you know, and you can take different approaches, right? If you are seeing multiple acres, you can't go out unnecessarily and easily irrigate. We have lots of clients who are in that situation where they're just, you know, they're putting, they're putting seed out, they're trying to time it with the rain, and they're hoping for the best and they will get you know, depending on the year, they'll get pretty good coverage, especially if they hydro seed or they use some mulch or straw to protect that seed and lock in some of moisture. So how do you do that? So if you are doing let's say, I wouldn't do this unless you had, you know, a larger area. But hydroseeding is when you mix seed with a bonded fiber matrix, basically some wood or paper that's kind of mushed up and the seed is suspended in it. And when you put it onto the soil, often this is done on slopes, it kind of sticks to the soil, and then the seed is protected by that matrix. And when it rains, it kind of keeps it locks in that moisture and provides a growing medium for that seed to germinate. Oh,

Michelle Fullner  39:51  
and so that's if you're doing a huge area. If you're doing a smaller area would you recommend just covering it with the like with straw? Yeah,

Julia Michaels  39:58  
so Okay, let's say you want to do You know, you've a small slope in your backyard and you're interested, the first thing you're really going to want to do is increase the contact between the soil and the seed. So you know, you can go out and sort of spread seed all you want, and you'll get, you know, varying results. But if you clear out whatever vegetation is already there, so you've got bare soil, and then you want to make sure to make that surface, we call it friable, but basically rough up the surface, there's lots of nooks and crannies for the seeds to land in. And that increases the contact between the seed surface and the soil. So then you would go out and you would spread the seed, and then you'd want to cover it, either you'd rake it in a little bit, or you can cover it with some mulch or some straw to protect it, that's what

Michelle Fullner  40:40  
we would recommend. And that probably keeps the moisture in keeps it just all cozy in its little growing cocoon. And

Julia Michaels  40:46  
it also protects the seed from blowing away, if it's windy first, sometimes on a slope, it'll just kind of slide down the slope otherwise, and also from critters, you know, we got lots of birds and other small mammals that would be interested in that seed, it helps that if you put a little mulch on top to protect it, okay,

Michelle Fullner  41:02  
and then it can get established and then kind of continue growing on its own. Okay, so I tried this, I have this weird little spot in my front yard that's kind of between my driveway and my neighbor's driveway. And so I took a shovel, it was just hard packed dirt, there was nothing growing there. So it took a shovel and it just sort of broke it up a little bit. And once it was all broken up, I took some seed that I got from my friend Jesse who got it from our friend Cliff who got it from hetero originally, and I took the seat and they sort of sprinkled it all along the surface of the ground. And then I sort of just padded it all down and kind of move the dirt on top of it a little bit. And then I watered it and I watered it occasionally to keep it moist. And then I stopped watering it when it started raining. And that was months ago in the fall. And now I have all of these puppies and Visalia and lupins that are coming up and the Visalia is really close to being ready to bloom. So I'm really excited. I'll post some pictures of that when it does bloom. I will say that as soon as I disturbed that soil though, and started watering it, a million weeds came out. So be prepared for that as a possibility.

Julia Michaels  42:09  
Yeah, and that's your question about, you know, watering, when you are first putting the seed out there. You know, obviously, the these are native plants that can survive with very little rain for germination. But it can be very helpful to provide some extra moisture, especially in this mega drought that we have. What you're thinking about, though, is the seed is really only hanging out in the top, you know, few centimeters of the soil in the beginning. So it's less about providing lots and lots of water, and provide more about providing consistent moisture levels over a couple week period of time. So if you go out and water a little bit every day for a couple of weeks, you'll have better successive germination.

Michelle Fullner  42:47  
Okay. Yeah, I know I've mentioned carrots like 50 times today. I don't know why I think I actually took out all the other times I mentioned carrots, because it was excessive. But like that reminds me of planning carrier Yeah, says you need to keep them moist right at the surface under such teeny tiny seeds they don't need. You

Julia Michaels  43:03  
don't mean it's not like a tomato plant where you do one big deep watering once a week, when you're trying to get seeds to sprout, it's very different. Because you would just want to keep that top layer moist over, you know, a certain number of weeks until you can see those first two leaves kind of coming up. Okay, and then you can kind of tell all right, this plant is establishing and you can reduce your watering significantly.

Michelle Fullner  43:24  
Nice. Yeah, that's fantastic. So that's really great, too. Because I feel like for me, if other people were like me, I have energy for something that the beginning and then I just like, lose the attention span and the endurance to actually follow up on it. So it's kind of nice, if that's the natural pattern, right? Like, I can help you out at the beginning. And you're gonna have to figure it out. Right

Julia Michaels  43:42  
and on top. Yeah. Also, I mean, you can just spend see it and hope for the best and see what comes up. But don't get discouraged. There are fantastic people like SF and bloom who go and they just spread seed around and they see what pops up. And that's a great way to do it too. So don't be discouraged from trying that also.

Michelle Fullner  44:01  
Right and talking to Charlotte go. He's like, I have the worst germination rate of any gardener, but he still has more plants than almost any gardener, right? Because he's just spreading so much seed. And so it's really what kind of approach do you have energy for? Exactly.

Julia Michaels  44:14  
That's fantast choose your own adventure?

Michelle Fullner  44:17  
Yeah, exactly. Both a worthy pursuit. Yes. Now another listener question. Eric dakak says that he's had mixed results in propagating natives from seed. So he wants to know, is it best to direct seed into the soil? Or is it better to start them in pots and then transplant later? Like, what are maybe some general rules about that? Sure.

Julia Michaels  44:37  
I wish I had general rule. I feel like the theme of this interview is It depends, right? I think, you know, lots of native seeds are great with direct sowing, you know, just put them right in the ground. Don't do anything fancy with them. However, there are some species I know you're really interested in milkweed that do benefits from some pre processing if you will. So one of the other great groups on Facebook that I love is the native California native plant propagation page. Okay, you can go to that and type in pretty much any species and you'll find some conversation about how to propagate it. And let's not forget that there are lots of native plants that do well from cuttings. Oh, so you know, especially if you're thinking about trees or shrubs, don't waste your time on seeds go out and find some cuttings, so they'll be the most locally adapted. The nice

Michelle Fullner  45:29  
thing about taking a cutting is that if it's a healthy plant, and there aren't a ton of people taking cuttings from it, you're not very likely to do any damage to the plant, and you're not taking away seeds that birds can eat, or that could be spread by the plant to reproduce. So cuttings are a little bit less morally ambiguous, but you still want to make sure that you know who's planted is is specially if you're on private property, you want to get permission. And you don't want to do this anywhere that is a nature preserve or any sort of protected area.

Julia Michaels  45:59  
So back to the question from seed. A lot of native plants have special adaptations that basically allow them to save their energy for the best growing conditions. One of them is some seeds need to experience a period of cold temperature before they'll germinate well, so they need to basically think, okay, they've made it through the winter, it's the spring now that can germinate. Other seeds need something called scarification, which is a great word, I think right word and that's where the seed coating on the outside needs to be scratched a little bit, it needs to be kind of roughed up before it's gonna feel like alright, I've probably traveled far enough that it makes sense to germinate. So sometimes you can use some some sandpaper to just kind of crack the seed coating to get it to germinate a little better. Lupin comes to mind as a species that we often sort of scarify using some sandpaper, and then there's even species that germinate better when they think that they've been through the intestines of a bird. So, you know, let's think about if you're trying to disperse as far as possible, and you're a seed, you know, when you know that you've been eaten by a bird floating around and then pooped out, you're more likely to be in a spot that is far away from where you started. And that's a good time to germinate. So some seeds actually do better with a little exposure to some acid, which is kind of interesting, too, is so you use for that. Oh, gosh, I mean, I don't know, I can't think of it off the top of my head. I've never done it.

Michelle Fullner  47:26  
According to lots of people on the internet. Sulfuric acid is often used for this, but a safer thing that you can use is just plain old white vinegar. It's less effective, but its major selling point is that it is not sulfuric acid. The big takeaway here is that I did not tell you to use sulfuric acid. I've heard of like liquid smoke. Yeah, things

Julia Michaels  47:48  
like that's another one to sow some seeds to better when they you know, their post fire species there. They come in as a secondary succession after a fire. And so when they experienced that smoke, it'll help them. It's really incredible. All right,

Michelle Fullner  48:03  
and then it turns out I was gonna say my friend Charlotte go from SF in bloom, we have him in common though you guys have been working together a little bit. He talked to me about overseeding. And that's particularly like with one. So can you talk a little bit about overseeding too?

Julia Michaels  48:15  
Sure. So this is something you know, I would love to learn a little bit more about from Shaco. But I think the idea is that not everybody has the time or energy to kill their lawn and replace it with the native meadow. I mean, we would all love that. But it takes a lot of work. I mean, just to get rid of your lawn, before you even start to think about what to replace it with is a whole cycle of having to get the unwanted species to come up, get rid of them, then water it again, get the rest of them to come up. And you know, if you're using herbicides is a little easier. If you're not using herbicides, it's nearly impossible. But what a lot of us have in our backyards or front yards is a kind of languishing lawn that is, you know, patchy and has big bare patches, and then some patches where it still looks pretty okay, and you get this kind of mosaic, right? And so one of the things you can do if you don't have the time or energy to completely replace your lawn, is just focus on those bare patches and just do some seeding in there. I mean, granted, you're never gonna have a perfect meadow if it's a mix of turf grass and native plants, but it's definitely a start and it probably looks a lot better than it just a bunch of bare patches in your lawn for

Michelle Fullner  49:27  
sure. And I feel like for me like I have a small front lawn and a small back lawn Yeah, no, and it's I just have small yards, but there's still a little bit of grass and like you said it's patchy and it's not doing great, but the amount of work it's either gonna cost a lot of time or a lot of money to be able to do it or maybe both Yeah. And thinking about tackling that problem is just so it sounds insurmountable to me right now. So I love it also is the idea of like, this is an interim step. Yes. Of like, I'm gonna get to tearing out my lawn when I have the chance. Yeah, but right now, I can go and throw some seeds on it. Like, that's something I can do right now totally.

Julia Michaels  50:01  
And, you know, cut your teeth on it a little bit and learn some learn some lessons, I mean, like I said, every single little neighborhood within an area is gonna have a slightly different climate and your soil types are gonna vary. So just see what grows really well, I would still say within those patches on your lawn, I'd still want to rake out whatever dead grass is there, expose as much soil as you can still the same principles of timing apply. It's just more of like a patchy approach. You can even pick just one patch to do this fall. And then next year, do two patches and, you know, basically scale it however you want. But one thing that I think it's sad to me is this idea that you have to have all this money to do these projects, because it should be something that is accessible to everybody. Right? And I think as people are starting to, as neighbors are starting to accept this idea that we're not all going to have these perfect Lunz you can do things that are a little bit more creative, like have patches of wildflowers in your lawn. It's not like they're looking that great. Anyways,

Michelle Fullner  51:03  
my lawn looks terrible. Yeah, our HOA hates us because we're always like, not knowing our lawn and not doing all the things right.

I'm not gonna put fertilizer out there that's gonna run off into the storm, you know? Like, I'm just not going to do it. They can be mad, but like, maybe there'll be happier if there's like some poppies growing in it. I

Julia Michaels  51:20  
don't know. Yeah, absolutely. I'm

Michelle Fullner  51:23  
just always gonna have beef with my HOA are never gonna see it. Oh

Julia Michaels  51:28  
my god, you know that, you know, that song, the REM song end of the world. The other day, I rewrote all the lyrics to be end of the line, as we know, nine, you know, our new single is going to drop pretty soon. Shalaka was gonna do the music video, it's gonna be great. Oh, please,

Michelle Fullner  51:44  
just collab when that happens. Okay, so you know, I went and followed up with Julia about this to see if she ever made this song. And you guys she did. She recorded it on GarageBand. And she let me listen to it. And at first, she made me swear to not play it for anybody. But then she loosened that up just a little bit, and said, I could play a few seconds for you. So you're gonna have to wait until after the credits, it's gonna be like a hidden bonus track of this episode. Except not hidden, because I'm telling you about it, but not a whole track because it's like, gonna be a few seconds. But it is. It is amazing. And I want her to do the whole thing. I'm so ready. The world is ready. The world needs this. So I am an amateur vegetable gardener too. You wouldn't know it by looking at my yard right now. Zastrow. There. But in years previous I have actually had like a thriving garden. And one of the things that I've done is I have this crazy setup in my garage, right? So I have like a cart. And it's big and it has grow lights on it. And then I use like seed trays that I water from the bottom because I'm too lazy to water them every day. So I like have this like, yeah, it's so that you just pour a bunch of water into the bottom of this thing. It's like it's a cool little setup, and it keeps the soil uniformly moist. All the little plants sprout and they're so happy. And then I it's got wheels on the cart, so I can wheel it outside and harden off the plants. It's it's cool. And it's been really good for vegetable gardening. And I'm wondering like, is there a situation in which you would recommend that for native plants? Or is it better to start them outside and like getting used to it right away? I

Julia Michaels  53:24  
would say for wildflowers for the most part I would generally recommend if they're especially annual wildflowers generally recommend seeding right outside. But for perennial grasses and some perennial wildflowers, that would be fantastic. Okay, one of the cool things you can do is, and this is sort of an in between buying mature plants and buying seeds, plugs, right, so you could grow, you know, 100 Grass plugs of some bunch grasses, and then wheel them out. And then when you're ready, you know, stick those in the bare patches in your lawn. And then yeah, plug them in. Exactly. And that's I mean, restoration is done that way. Not everybody does it that way. And it depends on the size of the project. But that's one way to guarantee not guarantee but really increase your chances of success. Right people will do whole lawns of plugs. And those do really well from starting out in trays.

Michelle Fullner  54:18  
Nice. And would you recommend what if you're wanting to grow something like bigger like a hedge or like like, a big a shrub or like Toy yawn or something like that? Would you start it? Yeah, the garage like that. Yeah, a

Julia Michaels  54:30  
perennial plant could be started from seed in a tray easily. Okay, yeah, it's just as annuals that and this is again my opinion, but I just think if you're gonna plant any wells, you might as well just plant them where they are gonna grow just because often they have these deep tap roots and it's gonna be kind of disturbing for them to be you know, once they're big enough being taken out of the tray and then replanted. For example, poppies. I've never would plant a poppy in a tray and then try and read planted somewhere. Something like that. Yeah, I've

Michelle Fullner  55:01  
had a lot of luck with spreading poppy seeds. Yeah. Well, I

Julia Michaels  55:03  
mean, in those talks about, you know, everything's relative poppies are an invasive species in other countries. So you know, it's one one country's native as another country's invasive. But they've got you know, they're very, they could do well in pretty much any soil type you put them in. So yeah, but some things like for Saleya tend to think of like some of the nice, like, perennial wildflowers that do well, even Yarrow can do pretty well from plugs. That's a good one. So you could start that in your garage and then nice, yeah, but things like clarkia that are annuals, you might just want a seed right where it's gonna be. Okay. Growing. So mostly perennials. Yeah. Perennial wildflowers, shrubs and perennial grasses. All right, yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I'm excited to see.

Michelle Fullner  55:49  
Am I going to give time to that this fall? I don't know. At some point, it's gonna happen. Okay, so some maybe like troubleshooting advice would be fantastic. And I don't have specific scenarios for you, I was just kind of wondering if there are things that come up for people who are starting this out on their own for the first time, maybe some, some of the top most common problems and what the solutions are. For those,

Julia Michaels  56:12  
I think one common problem is actually over watering. Sometimes, you know, so to think about these plants, once they're established, right, they really are used to the cycle of wet and dry that we have in this better trading climate. So sages, for example, people kill their white sages, their salvia Avianna, by over watering them all the time in the summertime. So, you know, once you've got your plants established, you really want to cut back on watering when it's more traditionally dry time. However, it's also of course, there's exceptions to the rule, like when we have 115 degree days for multiple days in a row, you know, you have to make your own decision about it. Some people would say you actually do need to water? So I think yeah, that's, that's one of those things you gotta want to pay attention to is once the plants are established, how do you want to care for them other troubleshooting things, fertilizer, some people put a bunch of fertilizer on their newly planted wildflower beds, you really don't want to do that, because native plants do really well in low nitrogen environments. And sometimes putting too much fertilizer will just encourage the weeds to come in. And then Weeding is a big issue. Right? So you plant all of these beautiful native seeds. And then oh, man, that Nutsedge might for me, it's the Nutsedge it comes up in everything. And then you either have to hand pull, or you have to think about okay, maybe if I have all grasses, maybe I might use a little bit of broadleaf specific herbicide. And yeah, it's just that long. Think about your plan for the long term maintenance of your wildflower or native plant garden.

Michelle Fullner  57:53  
Okay, yeah. So those are the big issues. And actually, you talking about watering leads right into my next question, which was about irrigation. So like, Do you have any recommendations for how people irrigate their native plants once they are a little bit more

Julia Michaels  58:06  
established? Yeah, some people have drip systems, which is really great. And again, it's about figuring out your soil type and how much water it needs. And you can do a lot of research online about that. But you're gonna want to be irrigating more in the first two years while the plants are getting established, and then really cutting back as they get older. Are you gradually stepping that down? Okay, yeah. And then you can also hand water, it depends on how much time you have. I actually had water my front strip, I would never do this in my backyard, because I just don't think about it. But because it's like I walked by it every day, I can kind of check on it. And the hand watering kind of keeps you in tune with what things need. So yeah, you can either do hand watering or drip irrigation. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  58:50  
I know that hand watering for some people can be very like meditate. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I can be really nice, but I think it's like that occasionally for me. And then I'll just like not do it the rest of the time. So it's probably not a good approach for me. Yeah,

Julia Michaels  59:01  
it totally depends. And I think for me, it's the time for me to go and look and see all the cool insects that are in my garden is when our hand watering. Otherwise, I don't know if I would just like, go out just to look otherwise, because I'm very busy, you know. And so I think figuring out a small area to hand water can be kind of fun, but it's nice. Yeah, that's

Michelle Fullner  59:19  
a good balance. Do you find that you get some good insect variety?

Julia Michaels  59:23  
Certainly. Yeah, we actually had a lot of fun. Two summers ago, a friend of mine who's an entomologist. And I put out pan traps and pitfall traps in our native gardens and a few other people's native gardens around Sacramento just to see what species of native bees we had and all kinds of beetles as well. And we had all kinds it was really really, really

Michelle Fullner  59:44  
cool. So sometimes you can't even see the biodiversity that's right in front of you. Unless you really kind of know how to stop and look for

Julia Michaels  59:51  
absolutely yes. Oh, this is another classic mistake people make is a lot of times do you think you've killed your plant but you haven't. A lot of these plants go dormant In the summer, so milkweed is a great example. It's going to die back all the way down to the ground. And so don't panic if you think you've killed your native plants, do a little research and see does this does this plant actually go dormant? Because it might just sprout right back up.

Michelle Fullner  1:00:15  
Okay, because it's got the root stock like underground. Yep. All right, let's give people a win. What are some of the easiest native plants to grow?

Julia Michaels  1:00:22  
i Right. Well, Poppy is number one. You can't I mean, it's hard not to grow. If you if it doesn't work, I'm not trying to shame you that they are super easy to go. clarkia are also really easy to grow from seed lupins are great. They're nice. They're super fun to watch germinate because they start with these kinds of round cotyledons are first two years and then they their first true leaves are the loved ones. So they're just fun to watch. And then they're really easy to gather the seeds in the plant. So we've been sued really, really well. And then it sort of depends on how much of a purist you are about locally native plants because I've actually found especially in Sacramento, some of the more desert California species have been really, really easy to grow like apricot Mallow. That has been one of the ones I've had the most success with. Okay, apricot Mallow is just it thrives in the heat and low moisture environment. So yeah, I think you know, a lot of those annuals are a great place to start. Apricot mela is a perennial, but I just found it that was a really cool one. But yeah, lupins poppies. clarkia is Gilead says I really easy to grow. And then you know, and this one I wouldn't do from seed necessarily probably just go out and buy a plug or one gallon but California fuchsia. Oh, I think every garden in California should have a fuchsia in it just because they're so beautiful. They're some of the later bloomers so you get a pop of brilliant color. Just when everything else is kind of starting to die out and then you get hummingbirds.

Michelle Fullner  1:01:57  
I was gonna say it's incredible. My neighbors have like a huge patch of California fuchsia, and I always see hummingbirds fluttering around. Yeah,

Julia Michaels  1:02:05  
very cool. And those you can treat those just like rosemary. What I love about fuchsia, California fuchsia is if you can grow rosemary, you can grow California fuchsia,

Michelle Fullner  1:02:14  
I can grow rosemary. Yeah. That's fantastic. One tip I've heard about growing California fuchsia, and this is from Matthew at find out farm. So shout out to Matthew, He says that if you planted just in a random place in your yard, it might take over a little bit. So he recommends planting it like on the Hill strip that strip in the front yard where it's like the between the sidewalk and the street or anywhere that sort of encased around with concrete because what that does is it keeps it from spreading to places where you don't want it and taking over everything else. But it's a fantastic plant. So just find a place where it'll be a little bit contained, and then just kind of ignore it, which is what I do to my rosemary, and I'm guessing it will be happy. Okay, maybe any difficult ones we should know about just either for people who want to challenge or so that people don't feel bad if they had don't have success with it.

Julia Michaels  1:03:07  
I wouldn't say milkweed is hard, especially if you're trying to start it from seed. I've seen people have trouble with white sage. It's definitely one of those super popular plants but just because it's so picky about water and it's like either I see like a really nicely well established one or I see lots of like struggling sad recently planted ones. Sometimes white seeds can be pretty picky. Other types of sage can be really easy like I love and hummingbird sage. Salvia spathe de ca i think it's called so beautiful, pretty hearty. But yeah, so don't feel bad. I mean, any native plant can be picky and difficult at times. So and

Michelle Fullner  1:03:47  
like, you know, white sage usually grows on like rocky hillsides, right? So it's like, I have like clay, you know, probably not the same as it's exactly so for

Julia Michaels  1:03:58  
me to say which ones are harder and based on my experience in the clay soils of Sacramento. So someone in Southern California might be listening being like, man, she must really suck. So easy. Again, it depends. Sorry.

Michelle Fullner  1:04:12  
But that's good to know. Yeah. And it helps to know what it depends on. Right? So he really knows it down. Okay, so let's say that people get some native seed and they're not ready to plant it this season, or they end up with extra for whatever reason. What's a good way to store it? Like what should people be doing? Yeah,

Julia Michaels  1:04:30  
I would keep it in like a paper bag or something with that's a little reasonable. Keep it in a cool dark place. That's the best way

Michelle Fullner  1:04:39  
so like is just your air conditioned climate controlled House good enough, or does it need to be like in the fridge?

Julia Michaels  1:04:44  
I don't think you need to keep it in the fridge. Okay. No, I think our warehouse is not refrigerated. It's just cool. low moisture. And well, you know, you wouldn't want to put it like on the windowsill or something. Sure. Okay. Yeah. And then that's easy to keep pretty long. I mean, it's not enough. necessarily like a tomato seed, where every year has this dramatic drop in germination rate, and some of these seeds, depending on the species can be many years old before they even decide to germinate. So

Michelle Fullner  1:05:12  
yeah, and I guess to the other thing is, if you're not having success, broadcasting your seeds, you're still contributing to that soil seed bank. Right? So suddenly, so maybe it's just not its moment, maybe it's gonna come back some other time. Yeah,

Julia Michaels  1:05:25  
I think if you're somebody who is open to uncertainty, and who likes trial and error, I think that you'll enjoy native gardening, I think one of the beautiful things about it is sort of giving up your sense of control a little bit, people who are interested in creating nature in their backyards, you kind of have to adjust your expectations. And I think it can be a really, really useful endeavor in this time, when there's so many things that feel out of our control to have something that is sort of purposely out of our control a little bit and that we can look at and, and learn from and just observe and share observations with other people. So yeah, I think psychologically, it can be a really nice endeavor. That's

Michelle Fullner  1:06:06  
great. And I like that, because it allows you to kind of give yourself grace to because I mean, these plants that we grow for food, or for other agricultural purposes, right? Like, these have been adapted over generations and generations and generations and generations, right, like, for so long, to be able to be grown as crops by humans, and so they shouldn't be easier, right, like, so when you're dealing with native plants, you're dealing with wild species, they're wild

Julia Michaels  1:06:34  
animals, I mean, the same way that you wouldn't expect, you know, a wild ringtail to behave the same as a house cat, you know, that unpredictability, but it would be fun to have a pet. But yeah, I mean, that unpredictability is what's so fascinating, and so humbling. And, you know, even here at headrow, where we're using traditional agricultural techniques to grow large amounts of native plants, and we have 30 years of experience, and we have these super knowledgeable people, every year is a new adventure for us. And there's just so many things out of our control. And you have to be flexible. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  1:07:14  
I just imagined that Jeff has like this insane spreadsheet inside of his brain that's like constantly being updated. Yes.

Julia Michaels  1:07:20  
I mean, and, you know, I don't, I don't want to embarrass Jeff. But I just at this point, I think that he is personally responsible for so many restoration projects being successful across the state, I mean, his knowledge, which, you know, we do need to plug Don Anderson, who started headrow farms, and founded this, this place, and trained Jeff and so many other restoration practitioners in this area. I mean, it, it has been a completely grassroots effort to learn how to do this, you know, 30 years ago, there wasn't anything like this, there wasn't, you know, you couldn't get native seed to do restoration and restoration wasn't so commonly understood to be a worthwhile endeavor. So we're really, you know, we're really excited to continue our legacy here at headrow are really excited to continue being a venue and a hub for native plant, education and outreach. And we're just so excited to host more tours and outreach events in the future. And you know, keep that going.

Michelle Fullner  1:08:21  
Speaking of events, open up your calendar app, because headrow has two of them coming up. The first one will be on Friday, March 31. And the second will be on Thursday, April 13. And I know it sounds like it would be far away to most of us city dwellers because this is a farm we're talking about. But headrow is only about 35 minutes west of Sacramento, and only an hour and a quarter northeast of San Francisco. So it's very easy to get there from many parts of the Sacramento Valley and the Bay Area. And you're definitely going to want to check out the farm at this time of year because the wildflowers will be going off. And there are just acres and acres of wildflowers. It's like an annual Super bloom. I have personally only gotten to see the farm in the fall. So far. It's been there two different falls. So I'm really excited to come and check it out. So soon, make sure to follow headrow on Instagram at headrow underscore farms or follow their Facebook page to find out more. Okay, last question for you. What about the work that you do either here at headrow or just growing native plants what still blows your mind or takes your breath away about it?

Julia Michaels  1:09:28  
I think that I mean they're really like classic responses just like how resilient and adaptable native plants are and just seeing the way that they can thrive in such stressful environments. But I think I'm as much as I love plants. I love people more. And I just I love it. It really blows my mind how many people are passionate about this and how empowering it is to do to contribute to this effort to restore and conserve wildlife in California, it brings people together so much. And you know, people who I wouldn't have anything else in common with finding that common ground. And I think especially when things are really tough just having this feeling like you're tangibly doing something to help can just be really, really special. And it just blows my mind how therapeutic it can be. So yeah, I think just I love my job every day. And I think a lot of people who work in this field love their job most days, which is pretty special.

Michelle Fullner  1:10:35  
That is not something you hear every day. Yeah, that's really cool. Well, Julia, thank you so much for taking the time to your whole morning.

Julia Michaels  1:10:42  
I appreciate so very much. It's been such an honor to get to be on this fantastic podcast. And I don't know, I just your work has been just so inspiring. Thank you. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  1:10:53  
I really appreciate that coming from someone who's doing so much to make our whole state a better place with California native seeds. So thank you, Julia, the feeling is completely mutual. And also Julia is completely right about the community that exists around native plants. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to experience this yet. But I'm consistently just stunned by what good people are attracted to learning about native plants and taking action for their local ecosystems by growing their own native plants. So thank you also for listening and being here and caring about all of the living beings and biodiversity around you. The other thing I want to thank Julia for is that she is literally the guest that I have sent the most emails to, and the most text messages after an interview just asking follow up questions. I had so many. And she was so patient with me and answered all of my questions, and it was very appreciated. Oh, and one of the things I was curious about was how that dry well was doing after all the rain of the season, and you will be glad to know that it's back in action and those groundwater recharge ponds and bioswales are getting a lot more action this year than the previous few. When I emailed Julia to ask her about the well, she replied all as well, which is 10 out of 10. Great answer. And if you think this podcast also gets full marks, make sure to leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts or Spotify reviews make me smile a whole lot when I read them. So thank you to everyone who's already left one and there are so many reminders from this episode. I'm just gonna blast you with all of them right now. So don't forget to share this episode with a native plant loving friend particularly if that friend lives in Amador city next to the hedgerow events are March 31 and April 13th. And you should go to them they even have a little lawn that is made from all California native grasses. It's amazing. The city nature challenge is coming up at the end of April so don't forget to download I naturalist and don't forget to stay to the very very end of this episode for the not secret. Not full track. Okay, I think that's all the reminders. Something interesting from my week is that I got to go on a critter walk at the vernal pools at SAC splashed which you may remember from one of the first ever episodes of this podcast and the person leading my group was David Rosen the guests from that episode. I was so excited about it because David is a fantastic guide my kids unfortunately got cold and grumpy because it was a wet and windy day and I haven't taken them out enough in days like that. So we went back to the splash building a little early and looked at the invertebrates swimming around in a bunch of trays they had out for display I had such a good time and I'm so excited to go back on a flower walk next month during the flower phase. Okay, that's it for this one just one episode left in season two, so I can't wait to see you on the last episode of season two of Golden State naturalist Bye

It's the as the lawn as we know it. Right deal