Hey Danielsan, Master Gardener Candidate,
I know your time is valuable and I don't want to ask anything that wouldn't somehow be beneficial to both of us. Two years ago we invested 5 figures into re-landscaping our yard using flowering California native trees, shrubs and plants. To keep costs down we kept the plant count low and focused more on the hardscape with the thought of slowly adding and filling in. Since then we've had issues with several plants dieing, Ground cover not filling in and just poor performance all around.
What I finally realized last October I started having water issues and my ground was being flooded even when I had the water system shut off completely. The cause of the flooding was my neighbors sprinklers were cracked underground and was flowing into my yard. It was a simple fix but it pointed out a bigger issue.
When I started digging down trying to see what was happening, I only dug up 3-4" of topsoil until I hit a layer of clay, about 3" thick that was left over from the original compaction while building the house 15 years ago. What was happening is ALL of the roots from my neighbors bordering shrubs were growing along the clay, 20ft into my yard and everything was root bound!!! Under the clay is pure SoCal Desert Sand and Rock. I've since dug out the entire flooded area 20'x20' and removed as much of the clay as I could (it came out in huge slabs) leaving only pieces that were smaller than a ping pong balls. I added around 5 bags of premium compost and whatever the recommended amount of gypsum and turned it all over.
That's the history. I figure it's pre-spring. Would you mind acting as my gardening consultant? Nothing huge. But something along the lines of what would be good proportions of nutrients and amendments I should use, watering schedules, etc. to get the most out of these plants, they all have amazing flowers which attract butterflys and hummingbirds . I don't have the strength to pull out the clay from the rest of the yard so if you could offer suggestions I can do. I don't want to clog up your thread, but it might be fun for me to start a new thread in the non-Marijuana sections. I'm not sure California Native landscaping is a topic in your Master Gardeners course, but if you are interested in navigating and letting me do the heavy lifting, it might be pretty fun!
Is this something that interests you?