Thanks for the comments! Glad to hear you are finding the Waterwise Garden Planner helpful. Although in general manzanitas can be trickier plants to grow, the two we recommend in our designs, Sunset and Howard McMinn tend to be easy for most people being treated with the same best practices and watering we recommend for most native garden situations.

Or maybe people enjoy a lush beautiful garden

You sound like a plant Nazi 😂

Very cool! Whenever you feel like you understand the results of comparing how the plants perform in the different conditions, we'd love to hear about it!

You might not get flowering within the first year of establishment, but you should see flowering shortly after that. Don't give up hope!

Hi! Please let us know if this has been your direct experience. Some of our team have been using this technique for the last 15 years in various parts of Southern California and have never experienced termites being an issue at all. If you have had problems with termites and mulching with cardboard covered by wood chips, please let us know where you are located so that we may better caution people in that area. Thanks for any additional information you may have!

Hi Carol. I don't think it would be a good choice for your area. It is listed as hardy to about 30 degrees. Calscape.org is a great resource for native plant profiles with maps of plants' natural ranges and minimum temperature information.

We plan on uploading a video dedicated to summer dormancy sometime soon, make sure you are subscribed and have notifications on so you don't miss it :)

Common table grapes & wine grapes are not native, they’re from Europe. And they are mostly seedless varieties. The California Wild Grape is native and it has seed. The leaves also look different

Native sages, other than hummingbird sage, usually do not respond well to transplanting. It may depend on how much the plant has grown. If it has not grown much, and in the fall you can dig out a root ball roughly the size of the above ground portion, it may transplant, though may very well die or be significantly stunted. If it is in your budget, it would probably be better to start with a new plant. If shade is your issue, on some sites they will put up with more shade than may be ideal, but will likely bloom less as well.

yes, of course!

The gray pipe going to and from the valves are irrigation risers (also know as nipples), similar to schedule 80 irrigation pipe, but not technically schedule 80. We like using the risers because they come threaded, so at each connection into the valve there is one fewer glued joint, which is one fewer place to potentially leak. Schedule 80 pipe works well for this purpose as well. Both of these gray irrigation pipes are considered to be UV stable, meaning they will not degrade in sunlight and become weak and brittle like white PVC will, which is technically only for use in applications where it is buried / not exposed to sunlight. Schedule 80 might only be available from speciality landscape supply stores, but 3/4" risers / nipples of varying lengths are usually available at both landscape supply stores and big box hardware stores. THIS IS VERY DIFFERENT THAN PVC EMT pipe!! EMT pipe is meant to protect electrical wires and is MUCH THINNER than irrigation pipe which must stand up to being under pressure and deal with pressure fluctuations without leaking. Electrical conduit pipe should never be used for conveying water.

Yup. Terra Secca can get pretty wide if it is "happy." It will definitely stay lower / more sprawling than the species, but I would expect to act the same way in terms of width. On some sites it might not exceed 10', but in some cases I'm guessing it would. I've grown it, but never measured it in the same way. The ground covers are a bit easier to control size with pruning, and can be "edge" pruned multiple times a year and still kept looking good much more easily than sage species normally can. The biggest size control issue most people face with the ground cover sages is planting them too close to other plants, or planting a mass of them 3' or 4' on center so they grow in quickly. When that happens they start growing over each other, quickly getting taller than a "ground cover," developing shaded out dead areas, and becoming much more difficult to maintain with pruning. However, planting 10' on center takes a long time to grow in. I usually would plant ground cover sages, and other vigorous ground covers like Canyon Grey sagebrush and Pigeon Point coyote brush 7-8' on center, which allows them to grow in pretty significantly over a couple of years if all is going well, but can still be maintained nicely with no more than annual pruning, plus a bit more near walkways or sidewalks. Also, expect Terra Secca and most of the other ground cover black sages to develop some bright yellow leaves in the summer heat, even if you are irrigating to prevent dormancy. Sometimes people assume this is due to under watering, and over water their black sage ground covers while seeing no improvement. The yellowing of some of the leaves is normal and best to be expected. Consider it a bit of fall color in the late spring or summer! Hopefully that helps!

You should very likely be able to keep it to no more than 10' wide if you prune back to 6-7 feet wide or so every fall. In our experience part of why black sage gets so wide in gardens is that it is more likely to re-root and become very vigorous in the locations where outer branches touch the ground as compared to the other shrubby sage species we grow. Pruning every fall will most likely prevent this from happening, or when pruning you can trim out spots that do root if you want to keep the size smaller. On other areas of our site that are extremely rocky, it doesn't seem to get much past 5-6' wide and goes very dormant in the summer to the point that it looks almost dead, so our best advice is to put it somewhere with plenty of room and see what it wants to do!

@@CBWCD Thank you for the detailed advice! BTW I love these short and densely informative videos; they're really invaluable!

That's Sam, a rescued Sulcata tortoise who was found roaming the neighborhood many years ago and has since become our sort of unofficial mascot. Other than visits from his humans on staff here and visitors, he is alone, but that is how Sulcata tortoises prefer it. They are a territorial and solitary species, so Sam prefers the single life and is not looking for a roommate!

Hi John. Digging bars are amazing, but we find much of our non-professional audience does not want to buy additional special tools they may only need for one or two projects at home. Also, not all of our audience has the upper body strength to properly use a bar. However, we totally agree that in heavy or compact soil this can well be the ideal approach. Thank you for adding the comment!

@@CBWCD to be fat if you can’t use a bar you can’t use a shovel either

*fair Bar is probably a lot easier than shovel

@@CBWCD depends on size

Hey Joel, White sage is monoecious meaning that it has both male and female flowers on one plant. The flowers themselves are considered to be hermaphroditic.

Great comment. You are absolutely correct, it would make future replacements easier. When installing a manifold from scratch, I'd definitely use a union. For this one, we were trying to keep the already long video as simple as possible. Also, for those just getting into plumbing, installing a union into a retrofit creates multiple other potential spots for leaks if all is not aligned and tightened correctly. If we do another valve installation or swap video in the future we will add that step! Thanks for they input!

I had heard of that happening, but it was a third or fourth hand story. Thanks for sharing!

That's Sam. He kind of runs the place. He was adopted many years ago when he was found roaming the local streets and is our most famous ambassador.

We source our hori horis from amazon! it's the Nisaku stainless steel with both the serrated and straight edge.

One of our favorite native bee books for ID is "The Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America's Bees by Olivia Messinger Carril and Joseph Wilson". The University of California also has a spiral bound pocketbook called "Common Bees in California Gardens" that is great for beginners.

Probably not. Expect the shrubs to hold their own, but the rhizomes of the matilda poppy to come up around and most likely on the other side of those shrubs. If that happens, don't worry, just pull the sprouts as you see them. They come up easily, but it's just part of the required care to keep it from taking over in most yards.