Zinnias bloom in vivid colors from summer until frost, are a snap to grow from seed, and attract birds and butterflies to your Sunnyvale yard. A rainbow of color options. They come in every eye-catching hue except true blue, so you can match them with your favorite perennial or annual flowers, foliage plants, and herbs. A height for every site. …

Red Trumpet vine has lots of pretty red flowers. I am warning you that it is an aggressive climber. You can see an example at the intersection of Matilda and Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road. Another example is on the south side of Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road past Fremont just past the Falefal-stop restaurant. I have a plant growing in a 3-inch wide trench and …

Carpet Roses need no spraying, no staking and just a simple snipping to shape annually. (I recommend feeding them once or twice a season with time release fertilizer so they have the nutritional resources to produce huge volumes of blooms over the entire growing season.) The Carpet Rose is an excellent low maintenance plant for the Sunnyvale garden.

Black-eyed Susan, Gloriosa Daisy, Yellow Ox-eye Daisy. I grow it as an annual. Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are native to North America and one of the most popular wildflowers grown. They tend to blanket open fields, often surprising the passer-by with their golden-yellow beauty. Members of the sunflower family, the “black eye” is named for the dark brown-purple centers of …

In our Sunnyvale garden, half of the trees are in pots. We simply do not have the ground space for more trees. In the 100 foot by 2 foot side-strip we have gingko, tangerine, grapefruit, feijoa, pomegranate, apricot, orange, and lemon. In the former swimming pool is a large cherry tree. In the former hot tub is another apricot tree. …

You can only eat so many blackberries in two weeks. We have been eating them fresh. We have been making galettes. So now we are making jam. Ingredients: Note this receipe makes about 8 jars Marionberries and/or blackberries (about two and one-half pounds) 6 1/2 cups sugar Ball Liquid Fruit Pectin pouch You will need: Boiling water canning pot or …

Every summer when the fruit is ripe, we make galettes. A galette is a free-form pie shell.  It can be sweet from fruit or savory like a pizza. Our first galette for 2017 has 4 cups of blackberries and marionberries. Pie shell Ingredients 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into cubes 1/4 …

It’s June 1 and these are the last of our artichokes. We had two plants: a Roma and a Violetta (instead of the usual Green Globe). I harvested the first flowerhead of each plant in early May. These are the secondary heads. This has been an experiment. I tried a few times before. Each plant was in a medium container …

Abundant REALLY LARGE fanciful blooms appear Spring thru Summer on this new “Monkey Flower” variety from Chile. Twice the size of the original species (2” top to bottom), ‘Mega’s’ creamy white flowers are blushed cherry & garnished with a yellow throat & showy spots. Dark branching stems, refined blue-green foliage & a bushy 20” high & wide form completes the …

May in our Sunnyvale garden is always full of flowers and growth. We had over 60 flowering plants plus fruit and vegetables.