The harvest of pomegranates from our Sunnyvale garden in 2015 was about half of 2014. Most of it was due to reduced fruit from the drought. We also lost about 8 from animals with incisors (mostly at night).

The Iceland Poppy is a boreal flowering plant. It is native to subpolar regions of Europe, Asia and North America, and the mountains of Central Asia, but not in Iceland!!!   Iceland poppies are hardy but short-lived perennials, often grown as biennials, that yield large, papery, bowl-shaped, lightly fragrant flowers supported by hairy, one foot, curved stems among feathery blue-green …

Our barrel cactus is flowering! Our barrel cactus in Sunnyvale is 30 years old. It now measures 14 inches wide by 11 inches tall. It started in a 4-inch pot. Echinocactus grusonii, popularly known as the Golden Barrel Cactus is a well known species of cactus, and is endemic to east-central Mexico. The plants do have some basic requirements; an …

Our pineapple guava tree is dropping its fruit a month earlier in 2015. Normally the fruit starts falling in mid-October. See this page for full info. Feijoa, pineapple guava or guavasteen, is a evergreen, small tree known for its spectacular red fleshy flowers in May and its small, tasty, green-skinned fruit in October and November. This plant is attractive to bees, …

This year, 2015, has been a poor year for tomatoes. The Aussie Heart plant produced two tomatoes. The one featured here topped out at 10 ounces. It is an excellent meaty tomato. We added it to a BCLT salad (Bacon, Chicken, Lettuce and Tomato). The smaller tomatoes are Slava. These tomato seeds were passed to the late Joe Thieneman, a …

We have an Asian pear tree in our Sunnyvale garden. Because we are growing it in a large pot, we selected a tree grafted onto ultra-dwarf stock . Ultra-dwarf has a smaller set of roots, both in depth and drip-line diameter. This makes it ideal for large containers. I planted it in winter 2012 and have been pruning it to …

It is August and the tomatoes are getting ripe. The larger one is 16 ounces. The smaller is 5 ounces

I grew the carrots in a 15 inch diameter wide by 15 inch deep pot. They were in the ground for 5 months. They are small carrots 🙁

You’ve gotta love annual vinca. It will tolerate a wide variety of conditions and still keep it up with almost unreal-looking, glossy green flowers and pretty pink, lavender, or red flowers that look like tiny parasols. LIGHT: Sun TYPE: Annual HEIGHT: 1 to 3 feet WIDTH: 6-16 inches wide FLOWER COLOR: Blue, Pink, Red, White SEASONAL FEATURES: Fall Bloom, Summer …

I love growing elephant garlic. You stick a garlic clove in the ground in the fall (Sunnyvale USDA zone 9). In the spring, a tall stalk/scape shoots up. If you leave it alone, a large (5 inch wide) flower head appears. You can cut it off partway up the stalk and use the flower in a vase and the garlic …