On 2008-05-25 Anne Larocca, Caroline DeMar, Eleanor Batho, Greg Brown and Stu Anderson began a site review of the grounds. One of the topics that we kept returning to was the issue of what it would take to encourage native plants to push out the weeds. We noted several hardy species already doing the job in several places.
Sue Lawler, who has been leading the TID-090 Weed and Trim @ Solana Drive task at the past two work parties had just sent an email on the topic.
Stu outlined this as a project and got immediate responses and committments as cited here:
Hi all,
Thanks for the excellent meeting this morning. And Sue, thanks for help with weeding (both previous and future efforts!). I didn’t really appreciate how huge a job it is to weed the roadside until I walked down there.
Greg and I talked after the service about making an irrigation plan for the whole site (Stu reminded us that this would be better than doing it piecemeal). We’re going to work on it this summer and will be happy to work with others if anyone is interested in helping.
My opinion is that one of our highest priorities should be to clear and maintain distance between brush/weeds and buildings. See this link for a recent San Diego policy: http://www.sandiego.gov/fireandems/pdf/brushpolicy.pdf Especially see the part about NOT trimming natives until after Aug. 15th.
I would love to have Mary Ann’s opinion about the best way to encourage more pretty weeds (natives).
Anne
"I will help you!" cried the billy goat. When the Memorial Wall is finished (Inshallah) I will have lots of time on my hands (relatively). Here are a few thoughts in response to the excellent outline Stu wrote up.
1.) If someone or two or three step forward to learn to propagate cuttings and then grow a number of them, that will be great, and it could be incorporated into our immediate project. It could also go on into the future. But if it's going to happen, that's the first part of this project that should get going. Linda Luisi might be interested.
However I know that native plants are available at nurseries at reasonable prices, and that there is enough other work in this project to keep us all busy. It will be easier to get money from other congregational members,( i.e. special donations for native plants ), than it will for us to grow our own plants.
If we get to the point where we've done all the rest of the weeding and irrigation system and are ready to plant natives, I think we might try out a few of the ones we may have propagated ourselves and for the rest plant commercially grown ones. Since we'll be putting a lot of volunteer effort into it, we should put a high priority on the survivability of the plants we put in the ground. We can see how they do and if they do well, expand our propagation efforts.
2.) Maryanne Bache is on a sabbatical right now. She's not working for the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy any more, and we may be able to interest her in helping us choose plants for our immediate planting and for our long range plans. As you know she's quite knowledgeable on all this stuff, so we're lucky that she's a fellowship member. She's helped us in our negotiations with the California Coastal Commission to get permits for the Memorial Wall.
My understanding is that Natives don't want any fertilizer. It shouldn't be difficult to get good advice on planting.
3.) We hope the Memorial Wall Phase I will be completed by the end of July. After that time I believe I'll have time and energy to focus on this landscape project. If you can get some or all of it going before then, that's good too.
Greg
| ID # | Title / Relevance |
| PID-058 | Irrigation Plan
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| TID-054 | File Plan with Fire Marshall
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| ID # | Tasks owned by this project: |
| TID-103 | Develop Reusable Irrigation Platform
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| TID-104 | Plan Attack on Weed Patch
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| TID-105 | Plant Natives @ Recovery Area
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| TID-106 | Water Natives @ Recovery Area
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| TID-107 | Weed Natives @ Recovery Area
|