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FIMBY: Enhance your food with edible flowers

Many herbs, annuals, even shrubs produce blooms that can be eaten

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED AUG 5, 2025

Viola blossoms add color to a chicken salad lunch. Many flowers are edible, but must be grown without pesticides. Kathy Morrison

This is another installment in our Food in My Back Yard series, devoted to edible gardening.

My first acquaintance with edible flowers was during the crunchy-granola 1970s. I was visiting a friend, whose roommates were preparing dinner. One roommate dashed outside, returning with a bright marigold flower. To my surprise, he crumbled the petals into the salad bowl on the table. Instant color for those greens, and yes, instant flavor pops, too.

Since then, I don't blink at blossoms on food. I don't use them as much as I could, but happily grow plenty of plants that can lend their flowers to dishes.

However, edible flowers come with an important caveat: They must be grown organically, without pesticides. No residue on the food, please. That's why it's best to plant your own edible flowers -- you know how and where they were grown.

Also be aware that not every part of every edible flower is in fact edible. With flowers from borage, roses or calendula, only the petals are edible.

So which flowers are growing right now that can be eaten? An obvious one is the blossoms on the squash plants. Especially if you're already tired of zucchini, try picking some of these flowers (morning's best), removing the stamens and pistils, and stuffing them with a cheese mixture before frying them.

Scarlet runner beans are another vegetable with easy-to-eat flowers. The petals of sunflowers are edible, too -- save the seeds for roasting or for wildlife.

Also, any flowering herb that can be eaten has, naturally, edible flowers. Not all may taste that great, but you can't go wrong with chive blossoms, lavender flowers or rosemary blooms. Mint, sage and scented geraniums (pelargoniums) have lovely edible flowers, too.

The Sacramento County master gardeners have compiled an excellent guide to edible flowers, in Garden Note 155. (Find the link on this page.)

Here are my top recommendations for easy-to-grow edible flowers:

-- Calendula (aka pot marigold). Likely the flower that went into that 1970s salad. Rinse the petals well and remove the base before crumbling. These easily reseed.

-- Dianthus (aka pinks). The petals will lend a clove-like flavor to salad or as garnish on baked goods. Remove the bitter base. Best when small, I think.

-- Nasturtiums. These grow in just about any soil, have great color, and will bloom until frost. They reseed, too.

-- Pineapple sage. If you can bear to pick the gorgeous red spiky flowers, which appear in fall, they have a pineapple flavor.

-- Violas/johnny jump-ups. I grow these under my roses, and they come back year after year. Gorgeous decor for salads, open-face sandwiches and pastries. One friend puts them on her deviled eggs.

Important: Toxic flowering plants are a crucial category for the gardener to be aware of -- and why any flower intended for consumption must be positively identified first.

In addition to the well-known poisonous plants oleander and poinsettia, common garden flowers to avoid eating any part of include anemone, azalea, delphinium, foxglove, hydrangea and rhododendron. There are several others listed on Garden Note 155.

If you're not sure whether a flower is edible, and can't get it 100 percent identified, don't eat it. Simple as that.

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FIMBY Food in My Back Yard herbs flowers edible flowers annuals perennials shrubs trees summer August Sacramento gardening edible gardening

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Flowers in My Back Yard Series

Aug. 18: Pollinators adore scabiosa, aka pincushion flower

Aug. 11: Hardy hibiscus adds big tropical impact

Aug. 4: Dianthus a deceptively hardy flower

July 28: Naked Ladies put on summer show

July 21: Thank Luther Burbank for these long-lasting beauties (Shasta daisies)

July 14: How to keep hydrangeas happy

July 7: Grow these bright cosmos for bees and butterflies

June 30: Agapanthus adds blue fireworks to the garden

June 23: Easy-care gazanias fill those hot corners

June 16: Daylilies are perfect for water-wise gardens (and a lot more)

June 9: Grow coneflowers for pollinators -- and yourself

June 2: Sunflowers capture Sacramento's summer attitude

May 29: Are your roses going 'blind'?

May 26: Zinnias are the summer flowers every garden needs

May 19: Plant dahlias now for late-summer flower power

May 12: Know your coreopsis from your bidens

May 5: Mums the word on Mother's Day weekend

April 28: Majestic Matilija poppy is worth a look

April 21: Celebrate roses, America's favorite flower

April 14: Small flowers with outsized impact

April 7: Calendulas do double duty

April 3: Make Easter lilies last for years to come

March 31: In praise of a pollinator magnet (small-leaf salvias)

March 24: Azaleas brighten shady spots

March 17: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

March 10: Keep camellias happy for years to come

March 3: Fruit tree blossoms are a fleeting joy

Feb. 27: Are your roses looking rusty?

Feb. 24: Treasure spring daffodils now and for years to come

Feb. 17: How and why to grow wildflowers

Feb. 10: Let's talk Valentine's Day roses

Feb. 3: Why grow flowers?

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Garden checklist for week of Aug. 16

During this break in the heat, feed your garden. Make sure to water before and after applying fertilizer.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips.

* Plant potatoes.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers. Also, give them a boost with phosphate-rich fertilizer to help fruiting.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Feed citrus trees their last round of fertilizer for the year. This will give a boost to the fruit that’s still small.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don't let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Camellia leaves looking a little yellow? Give them some chelated iron. That goes for azaleas and gardenias, too.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot. Then feed fruit trees with slow-release fertilizer for better production for next year.

* To prolong bloom into fall, feed begonias, fuchsias and container plants. Always water before fertilizing.

* Fertilize fall-blooming perennials, too. Chrysanthemums can be fed until the buds start to open.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials, then give them a boost of fertilizer. Make sure to water plants before feeding. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

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