More and more homeowners are incorporating edible plants into their home landscape in order to enjoy the fresh taste of fruits and vegetables. Another trend to consider this coming cool season is to start a few common flowers that can serve as flavor enhancements for many of your dishes.
There are numerous plants that we commonly grow that have edible flowers but before striking out on your first taste test, be sure to research first. Always remember the common saying that every flower is edible once. Find a reputable reference guide from a friendly neighborhood Extension office for a list of common edible flowers, then be ready to start from seeds. It is best not to purchase transplants from an ornamental nursery unless you are sure of all the treatments for that plants. Nurseries are often selling these for beauty alone, not with intention that they will be eaten.
Here are a few edible flowers to try:
Pot marigold or Calendula is a wonderful cool season flower on its own. Brightly colored orange or yellow flowers improve the drab colors of our cool season and plants are sturdy annuals for borders, mass plantings, or in containers. Petals have a peppery flavor and add spice to salads and sandwiches. You may also add flowers to soups, fishes and butters for added coloring. Calendula petals can be a saffron substitute.
Calenduala is easily started from seeds and will reseed in your garden once established. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
The well known dianthus is a great transition plant as our days cool and warm up again the spring. Use as front of the border plantings or in containers as a filler. When harvesting petals of dianthus, you will want to remove the white petal base which is a little bitter. The flavor is a little more delicate than cloves so you can add petals to punches, desserts, and fruit salads.
If you like a little more spice, try nasturtiums. We often plant these after the last frost and they grow until we get too hot. Since our fall weather is so unpredictable, you may be able to start some seeds for a fall planting and have flowers before our first cold spell. Either way, nasturtium flowers are often sliced for salads and sandwiches as a mustard or pepper substitute. You can also mince flowers to add to a butter. If you let some flowers go to seed, collect the unripe seeds to make a caper substitute vinegar.
Grow nasturiums during our transition times of spring and fall. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
If you are going to use edible flowers from your garden remember to keep all non food labeled pesticides away from plants. Harvest flowers at their peak after the dew dries. Separate petals from other flower parts and if you have allergies be sure to remove any pollen. Place flowers in a moist towel in the refrigerator if you will not use them immediately. Rinse carefully so not to damage tender petals.
There are many other ornamental plants that offer edible flowers you may want to consider growing in the future. These flowers not only enhance the look of the dish but can offer unique flavoring from a locally grown source – your own backyard.
We are always on the lookout for an attractive plant for our landscape. At the nursery, some plants have a more difficult time gaining our attention. They may not be as showy, possessing neither colorful flowers nor bold foliage. In these cases, we could be missing out on low maintenance plant that offers its own form of beauty in the right landscape spot.
One plant that I love is the Japanese plum yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonia), especially the spreading form ‘Prostrata’. In the nursery container, this plant is nothing special but once established in the landscape it performs well. The conifer type leaves are an attractive dark green and the ‘Prostrata’ selection is low growing to about 2 to 3 feet. An advantage too is that growth is slow so it won’t take over or require routine pruning.
Japanese plum yews grow best in partial shade and once established will be fine with rainfall. For a shadier side of the home, the spreading plum yew has a place as an evergreen foundation plant too.
Japanese plum yew in a shaded garden. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County
If the ‘Prostrata’ selection is too low growing for you, consider the ‘Fastigiata’ cultivar that will grow upright to about 8 feet with a 5 foot spread.
A year old planting of upright Japanese plum yew in filtered light. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County
As an avid gardener and plant collector you might think I’m hyper-aware of everything growing in my yard. Sadly, I’m just as busy and forgetful as the next person and don’t always remember what’s out there. The silver lining to the distracted auto-pilot life we find ourselves in is that occasionally you get brought back into the moment by a show stopping surprise in the garden.
Bleeding Heart Vine is one of those garden gems. Planted in the bright shade of a pair of oak trees in my Northwest Florida yard, the dark green foliage blends into the background most of the year, but when it flowers look out! Panicles of 5-20 white and red flowers brighten up the shady garden. As the flowers fade, they turn a deep mauve that is just as attractive as the fresh flowers.
Some vines can be aggressive growers, but in the Florida Panhandle Bleeding Heart Vine is a relatively slow grower reaching about 15 feet at maturity. It is classified as a twining vine, but may need a little help supporting itself on a trellis. This vine lacks tendrils or suckers that some vines use to attach to structures, which makes it a little easier to redirect if it starts to grow in an undesirable direction. Don’t want it to climb? Prune to stimulate branching and it gets more of a sprawling, bushy shape.
Bleeding Heart Vine prefers moist, well-drained soil and high humidity. It is hardy to 45°F and may need protection in the winter. Personal observations of this plant have shown stem dieback in the winter, but it has grown back for multiple years without protection in Northern Bay County.
Homeowners are always looking for methods to manage one of our most difficult pests in the vegetable garden. Learn about the science of how to properly use marigolds to deter nematodes against one our our favorite summer fruits In the Garden with UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
I’m a native of Georgia, growing up just south of the region known as “peach country”. To me, there’s nothing better than a ripe, juicy peach on a summer day. I thought I had seen it at all when it came to peaches. That changed on a trip to the southwest U.S.
A few years ago, I was fortunate to make the voyage to Utah for the National Association of County Agricultural Agents annual meeting. A small group of county agents also participated in a pre-tour of the southwest region of Utah. This is where I found a treasure in the desert, as a host extension agent shared some of his oddly shaped, Saturn peaches from a nearby orchard.
The Saturn peach is a favorite in Utah and a favorite for hundreds of years in Asia. This is an asymmetrically shaped peach, with white, firm flesh. Some refer to this as a “donut peach”. It is an interesting fruit, that I must admit was one of the most delicious peaches that I’ve ever eaten.
Figure 1. “UFO” Peach.
Credit: Ali Sarkhosh, Mercy Olmstead, Jose Chaparro, Pete Andersen and Jeff Williamson. UF/IFAS Extension
I began to ponder why this peach variety was one that I had never encountered? After consulting with extension agents in neighboring southeastern states, I found that many universities had experimented with the variety. However, pitfalls in climate acclimation, mechanical harvesting (because the fruit is not round, harvesting equipment can damage) and marketing were discouraging. From a large commercial production interest, even if a viable yield could be grown in the region and custom designed harvesters were feasible, hurdles would still remain regarding the difficulty of marketing an introduced variety that has an unfamiliar and imperfect shape, versus well established varieties that can be graded as select. However, a healthy market may exist for small farms as novelty crop.
Furthermore, in 2002 UF/IFAS researchers breed and patented a similar variety of the Saturn peach that thrives anywhere in Florida. The Australia saucer peach was used to breed this new variety, known as the flying saucer or “UFO”. This peach has non-melting flesh with that unique donut shape, not unlike the Saturn. These trees are large and vigorous growing, with a semi-upright growth habit. The UFO produces moderately heavy crop loads of large, firm fruit with yellow flesh and semi-freestone pits that has a fruit development period of 95 days. As seen in figure 1, the skin develops 50–70% blush. This cultivar is particularly susceptible to ethylene that is released during dormant pruning, which can result in significant flower bud abortion. Thus, pruning is only recommended during the summer period.
For more information please contact your local extension office.
Supporting information for this article obtained through past interviews of Dr. Wayne Sherman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Horticultural Sciences, UF/IFAS as well as from the following the UF/IFAS EDIS publication: “Florida Peach and Nectarine Varieties” by Ali Sarkhosh, Mercy Olmstead, Jose Chaparro, Pete Andersen and Jeff Williamson: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/MG/MG37400.pdf
UF/IFAS Extension is an Equal Opportunity Institution.
Azaleas are a beautiful shrub for the north Florida landscape, especially if pruned properly. Source: Larry Williams, UF/IFAS
The sight of azaleas in the north Florida spring just makes you feel good. They are so vibrant, and with such variation, that you can’t take your eyes off them. As an appreciator of these beautiful displays of color, nothing pains me more than to see an improperly pruned azalea during this time. If you must prune your azaleas, please, please only prune them once a year and only soon after flowering has ended! This public service announcement will hopefully ensure we all get to see the full azalea show. Otherwise, we’ll be left with mostly green hedges, some flowers uncomfortably tucked in the interior of the plants, or flowers poking out the sides like a middle-aged man’s balding head.
If pruned properly and at the right time, this azalea shrub would be a mass of flowers. Source: Mark Tancig, UF/IFAS.
The common flowering azaleas in landscaped settings are native to Japan and a relative of blueberries. They comprise many different hybrids, cultivars, and varieties of plants in the genus Rhododendron (Greek for rose-tree) and have been cultivated for centuries. Long ago, I’m sure, those who studied plants and tinkered with azaleas realized that their vegetative growth (new leaves and stems) ends soon after flower bud initiation. This means that later prunings, or multiple prunings throughout the year, will be taking off more developing flower buds than new leaf and stem growth.
To prevent depriving us all of less flowers, consider why – or if – they need pruning in the first place. Proper planning and planting can prevent azaleas, which naturally want to be a sprawling shrub, from growing into the sidewalk or driveway. If you’ve inherited azaleas that may be the right plant, but slightly in the wrong place, they can be heavily pruned every couple of years to keep them in check, and can even be transplanted. Azaleas are not a good choice for formal hedges. If given the right place and enough space, the only required pruning would be dead, diseased, or crossing branches.
If you decide you need to prune – whether to knock back for space or for general shape – only bust out the loppers once the flowers have withered on the ground… and then lock those loppers away so that you won’t be tempted. If you have landscapers working for you, remind them to keep the hedge trimmers away from the azaleas.
Azaleas are vibrant, even in black and white! Source: Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Project.
For the love of flowers, please prune azaleas thoughtfully, and share this information with others
P.S. We also have several species of native azaleas (including Rhododendron austrinum and Rhododendron canescens) that can be a beautiful addition to the landscape.
