It's Planted. Now What?

The care that a new plant needs depends on the plant and environmental conditions such as season, soil, and amount of wind and sun. This requires some initial evaluation and improvisation. These are general rules for follow-up and can be tweaked according to how each plant responds.

Water deeply and slowly once a week, allowing time for moisture to seep below the rootball. Don’t let water collect at the base of the plant.
Hover over the new plant for four to eight weeks. At this stage, deep soak once a week and keep the soil several inches down from completely drying out but the soil should never be soggy. If the weather is mild, use gentle sprays to help hydrate foliage while roots are forming. The sprays will also add a little bit of water to the ground and reinforce weekly deep waterings.
If the plant is stable after four weeks, keep up weekly soaks but taper off watering in between. Gradually lengthen the dry spells, but continue watering deeply when you do water. You’re training roots to find moisture by growing downward, away from the surface of the ground where they’re prone to dehydration and freezing.
After a full turn of seasons, the goal is to end up at one or two really good waterings per month.
If the plant isn’t showing much growth in the first year, don’t fret. Even a perfect plant in a perfect spot may not show much change while it’s busy developing a root system. In the second year the plant should increase in size and maybe bloom. By year three most plants blast off. Gardeners call this three-year cycle sleep, creep, leap.

When the plant has established, congratulate yourself! You cared well for it. By this point you’ll feel confident about how little water it needs and your plant is ready for whatever nature brings its way.

TIP	CAGING
	CAGES PROTECT FROM WILDLIFE AND HEAT We all know about caging plants to keep them from being nibbled but cages can also be used for draping tender young plants to protect them from brutal sun or winds. Both sun and wind can burn foliage and cause plants to lose water. Make sure that cover materials let light through and allow lots of ventilation since desert plants don’t respond well to humidity. Use a covering that won’t absorb extra heat or conduct cold. A good caging material is 1/4” 23 gauge metal hardware cloth. It’s lightweight, cuts easily, and holds a nice shape. Lizards and small animals get wedged in larger 1/2” mesh, and its impossible to wrap chicken wire into a clean, rigid cylinder. The example above shows a covered baby Joshua tree to simulate its natural conditions. We think of Joshua trees as sun lovers but their seeds like to germinate in the protection of nurse plants where they’re hidden from predators and bright sun while developing. By recreating the conditions in which it evolved, this fledgling plant has a better chance of survival and will enjoy a faster growth rate. WILDFLOWER SEED IN CAGES A little trick for sowing wildflower seed is doubling up by using already planted cages. Annual wildflowers don’t live long enough to develop root systems that cause problems by competing with the main plant. They’re less likely to get grazed but can still reseed through the mesh for a more natural distribution of wildflowers in coming years. Seeds are likely to geminate since the caged plant will probably be getting some supplemental water. You’re less likely to compromise emerging seeds when you're weeding out the invasive grasses that come up first. Before sprinkling seeds, mix with coarse soil to make them easier to spread evenly. Most wildflower seeds are tiny and need UV light exposure plus wind to abraid their seed coatings. Due to their small size, emerging leaves lack the reserves to push up through soil and they won’t succeed if covered with more than a patchy dusting of loose soil. A few small rocks or a little bit of dead plant matter will form a seed catchment to keep them in place and make a good base to toss seeds over, as long as catchment material is sparse enough to let the seeds touch soil. Larger seeds can be buried but not deeply. COVERING AGAVES IN SUMMER Cactus and succulents need nighttime summer temperatures to drop below 90 degrees so they can rest. But this past summer was so hot that even tough agaves scorched. Try covering the south side of any vulnerable agaves and protecting the ground with rocks placed on the heat side of the root area. Covering shades the plant from sunburn and also slows down water evaporation through the leaves. Avoid covering materials that get hot, hold heat, or cut off air flow and secure the cover by weighting it down.