2008 Gardening Retrospective

The back yard is finally drying out! Last Thursday I started digging a trench to try to drain the water to the street. I've lengthened the trench periodically throughout my six-day weekend, but I still haven't gotten the trench out to the front yard. It's about midway through the side yard. So I don't know whether the trench actually made much difference in drying out the yard - but it's been raining a little off and on throughout the week, so I hadn't expected the yard to get much drier without adding drainage. The trench did relocate a fair amount of the water, so maybe the area I relocated the water to was more capable of soaking it up. Anyway, whatever the reason, parts of the trench still have water right now, but most of the rest of the yard is now mud rather than standing water.

And now I want to write a year-end gardening retrospective. 2008 was my first year of attempting to grow plants outdoors. I grew a variety of California native plants, mostly ones specifically native to my local area in the eastern Sacramento Valley, and began learning which ones work best for me. My plants did not produce a single flower, however, except for the ones they already had when I brought them home from the nursery. So 2009 is going to be the year in which they produce flowers for me.

Here's what I learned about the species I have the most experience with so far.

( Not of any interest unless you plan to grow California native plants. )