Fine Gardener
People often ask where the “best” place is to buy plants.
Wow! That is a tough question to answer and here’s why:
The Problem: There are only a few nurseries left in the South Bay and most of them sell the exact same plants and products. Sure, Yamagami’s has a reasonable selection of fruit trees and Summerwinds has lots of annuals, but little else is different. There is almost no difference in plant selection since they buy from the same growers, and it is rare to find something really unusual. Also, retail nurseries promote what they carry. If their selection is limited to begin with, you may never know about plants that could work for you.
Another problem is availability. Landscaping goes on almost year-round in this part of CA, yet retail nurseries usually only stock whatever is blooming at the moment. Do you really want to hear: “We won’t have XYZ until next year”?
So what do you do if you want a “palette” that is different from everyone else on the block or need certain plants during the offseason?
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TO AMEND, OR NOT TO AMEND: THAT IS THE QUESTION. Whether, ‘tis better for the plant or the profits of the nursery? (My apologies to the Bard.)
When you buy a plant at a nursery, you are often whisked over to the soil amendments area and solemnly told to backfill the planting hole with a mixture of 50% native soil and 50% whatever is the special of the week. Let’s consider a few things:
The Santa Clara Valley used to be called “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” (a little overblown, but you have to consider the times) due to its incredible agricultural productivity. I’ve never read anything about soil amendments coming in by the train or ship load to help the farmers.
As a class project at Foothill, we all had to perform basic soil tests on the soils from our yards. I and many of my classmates from all over the area had soils that were quite high in organic matter.
The growing mediums in nursery containers have been designed to make the plant grow quickly. Aren’t you doing pretty much the same thing when you highly amend the backfill material in a planting hole? What happens when those roots hit the real world of unamended native soil? Why would the roots ever want to leave such a happy environment for the local soils?
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