I wanted to get a "Louis Edmonds" manzanita from the Santa Barbara botanical garden sale, but I never made it over there. Sigh. Glad you got yours. The spot looks great. I must admit that I love the Japanese Maple too. My DH has been wanting one for a while. However, I think the manzanita will be even better there. ~Melissa

Never amend the soil near a manzanita. The nutrients will cause the mycorrhiza to detach from the roots, leaving the plants open to attack by pathogens. Manzanitas strongly associate with the ectomycorrhiza in the first four or so inches of the soil. Unless your house is in a newer subdivision, where the top of the soil has been recently scraped away and then bulldozed back into place, there is likely mycorrhiza in your soil. This is particularly true if you have other plants that have mycorrhizal associations. If you have several of these plants in the ground, you may have a mycorrhizal "grid" in your soil. I took out a couple of diseased Myrica californicas and planted a Howard McMinn manzanita in between the two ground-down stumps back in March. The Howard McMinn grew from the size of my hand to 22" x 30" in seven months. That said, I don't see how inoculating one's soil with more mycorrhiza would hurt. The best way to enhance and maintain the mycorrhiza population in your soil is to mulch heavily with bark from plants that have mycorrhizal associations. The bark provides nutrients to the fungi. Oak, pine, fir, and Doug fir bark mulch all work really well. Spread a 3" deep layer in a 3' diameter around where you're going to plant. Water heavily a few times over the course of a couple of months, and your soil should have a strong mycorrhizal population. Add fresh mulch every spring. It's also important to note that it is possible to under-water a manzanita in its first year (I've done it). Manzanitas planted in the spring will probably need water every 10 days or so during that first summer. From June-October, stick your finger a few inches down into the soil. If it's dry, water it (around the perimeter of the root ball). If the soil is moist, check again the following week. In addition, some ESTABLISHED manzanitas do best with at least some summer water. Some of the A. hookeri cultivars do best with water every 10 days or so. On the other side of the spectrum, A. glauca Big Berry prefers no summer water. Some species, such as A. densiflora, have cultivars with very different water tolerances (Howard McMinn can take once-a-week water, while Sentinel doesn't like more than once-a-month water). Be sure to water in the early morning, when it's cool outside. Watering at 2 pm when it's 102 degrees will promote root rot! Below is a link that contains water requirements. Here is a link that might be useful: Manzanita requirements

Timing is the key when one tries to manage scale of any kind. The following statement from the UC link posted above states the two CRITICAL factors as to the time to spray: "If scales become too numerous, a well-timed and thorough spray using horticultural (narrow-range) oil applied either during the dormant season or soon after scale crawlers are active in late winter to early summer should provide good control." In other words: 1. dormant spray 2. or when crawlers are present

The CNPS link is dead now, but the original content is still available at the Internet Archive. Here is the text of one of the replies from March 2000: A few years ago, one of my colleagues at Yerba Buena Nursery grew a lovely stand of Arctostaphylos canescens by burning the seed flat. You take a wooden seed flat plastic would melt, cover sides with aluminum foil, fill with seed medium, plant the seeds I think she left them on top of the medium, water them in, then cover top with 3 inches of flammable material. I can't recall what she used - might well have been dried pine needles. Then you set the flat on fire and let it burn down. You will be left with a bunch of ashes covering the seeds. Leave the ashes there, water the flat at regular intervals just like any othe seed flat. This worked very well with A. canescens, and should work with other fire-dependent species. The resulting plants grew quickly for a manzanita, and looked better than cutting-grown plants.