Prior to this spring (2016), I had not seen this daisy-like flower. In vivid blues, magic magentas, ultraviolets and stunning bicolors, where else can you find vibrant color early in the season? Plant Senetti with other cool companion bedding plants in early spring, such as pansies. Senetti thrives in full sun and partial sun conditions and down to 35 degrees. …

Sunnyvale, CA, USDA Zone 9, Wednesday February 17 2016. I have a Jalapeno pepper bush and salad greens that survived the brutal El Nino winter (lowest temp: 33). Yesterday’s high was 81. As I munch on a homegrown jalapeno tangerine salad and watch my pineapple growing, I wonder if there is anything to this global warming thing?

Few exotic trees are as widely cultivated and versatile as the Acacia tree. While there are more than 800 species of the Acacia trees around the world, most feature small, finely divided green leaflets that give the stalk a fernlike appearance. Another distinguishing appearance of the Acacia tree is its blossoms. The small, fragrant flowers are: Pea-shaped Arranged in compact …

Our Sunnyvale garden in 2016 has a lot of citrus: Grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, and the newest attraction: Australian Finger limes.

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).

English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is easy to grow in Sunnyvale gardens. It has modest water needs and can grow in small areas (once established). My lavender plant is in a two-foot wide trench excavated one foot deep in clay. Fresh lavender flowers may be used in sauces, marinades, and desserts. Handle fragile dried blossoms with care and use them in …

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 …