Plant rain, then seed, to vegetate your rain gardens for FREE with Brad Lancaster

This video is about how you can vegetate your yard, neighborhood, school grounds, and more for FREE by planting seed of desired multi-use native plants after planting rain.
If you do this at the beginning of the rainy season/growing season and you get at least average rains that season your chances for success are very good. And you likely will not ever need to irrigate the plants if you first plant the rain, so the seeds and resulting seedlings get direct rainfall AND additional runoff water that runs off adjoining surfaces to the planting(s). Depending on the rains, you may also have good success if you do this after the rainy season is well on its way and the rains are good.
If you do this in a drought year, and the seed germinates with the rain, but then no more rain comes, you could give the seedling supplemental irrigation as needed.
A big advantage of planting by seed where you want the plant to grow in the ground is that the plants' roots will never be hemmed in by a planting pot, so the roots will grow deeper and wider than they likely would if transplanted from a planting pot. This will make for plants that are more drought resistant and better anchored in the soil and thus more resistant to high winds.
As many other plants' seed will likely be germinating with the rains, chances of your seedling being eaten will be greatly reduced because there will be so many other plants/meals to choose from. But if the risk of predation or trampling is high where you plant, you could put up some protective fencing around the seedlings. If a lot of weed seed also germinates around your seedling, pull those weeds so your seedling won't be mistaken for a weed, nor will it have to compete with the weeds.
NOTE: in this video I plant the seed in a spot with a lot of mulch, but I find I have much more success if I plant by seed when there is NO mulch. Mulch can be added later after the plant is of good size (at least a foot tall).
More info and photos of planting native seed with the rains:
dunbarspringneighborhoodfores...
The idea is to create water-harvesting earthworks that plant the rain, then plant multi-use vegetation, which once established will be able to live on just the passively harvested rain-no supplemental irrigation with costly imported waters.
The more desired beneficial vegetation you get growing in your yard, neighborhood, watershed-the more resilient and diverse its living seed bank becomes!
When we started in our neighborhood we had to collect almost all seed for desired native plants from outside the neighborhood. Now that we have some much growing from our replanting efforts, most of our seed can be collected within the neighborhood (but we still keep on introducing additional species of multi-use natives to further enhance the diversity).
Wildlife, water, and wind then all help to further disperse that seed enhancing more of the larger watershed.
SEED SOURCE
In Tucson, AZ a great source of seed is the Wildlands Restoration seed mixes, available at Native Seeds/SEARCH and Spadefoot Nursery.
I especially like to use their "Short Stuff" seed mix on the rain gardens' planting terraces,
and the Bosque del Bac Habitat Restoration Mix in the rain gardens' basin bottoms.
See link below for more on these and other seed mixes for the Sonoran Desert:
dunbarspringneighborhoodfores...
For more on the rain garden planting zones see:
www.harvestingrainwater.com/r...
Get more info on how to do this and harvest many other free, on-site waters at:
www.harvestingrainwater.com/
There you can buy Brad's award-winning books, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond" at deep discount direct from Brad at:
www.harvestingrainwater.com/s...
For more info on the community water harvesting and native food forestry work check out:
dunbarspringneighborhoodfores...
For more videos that expand on this one subscribe to this channel at:
ruclips.net/user/Harvestin...

[@beckseamons]

Really impressed with the work you are doing. Thank you, Brad.

[@808zhu]

Just bought your book, even though I've read all three already. Going to be referring to it as I put the information into practice. THANK YOU.

[@patblack2291]

Direct seeding is particularly good to do with trees and shrubs that develop a tap root. They are able to develop naturally without having to deal with being in a container first, which can disrupt the tap root. I've dug up trees that were 1"/3cm tall above ground that had 18"/46 cm long tap roots. A lot happens underground in the plant world.

[@noelradley1]

Always great to see another video from you, Brad. Thanks for sharing!

[@maguillomx]

I would love to know how big are they now!!!

[@valenfuture]

These little videos are great, very practical, and hopefully simple to make and publish. Thank you and keep up the good work!

[@kurtundjuanahintermayrruiz7533]

Muchas gracias!

[@ummmjustsayin]

❤️❤️❤️

[@williamhad]

Is there any easy way to know if a sapling mesquite is hybridized?

[@HarvestingRainwater]

Check out this link: dunbarspringneighborhoodforesters.org/plant-resources/choosing-mesquite-trees-for-landscapes-how-to-identify-different-species/