Yamagami's Nursery is participating in this community campaign to support our local schools. The Cupertino School District is facing unprecedented shortfalls and now must make drastic cuts to core instruction. Their Future Is Now is a community campaign to raise $3 million dollars in locally donated funds to preserve our excellent school programs.

Tuesday May 4th Yamagami's Nursery will donate 5% of our net sales to this worthy campaign. Plan to add to your spring garden that day and help support our schools!

Now that the soil is warming up it's time to start green beans. They are high in fiber and loaded with nutrients including vitamin K, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin A potassium, folate and iron. According to the website, The World's Healthiest Foods, few foods can compare to green beans in their number of helpful nutrients for arteriosclerosis and diabetic heart disease. In other words, green beans are good for you--and children often like them. Yamagami's does offer soil inoculants to provide the beneficial bacteria beans need to make their own food.

In talking with other staff members it turns out we all have different favorite green beans and different ways of preparing them.

My personal favorite is Musica, a specific Romano type, available by seed from Renee's Garden Seed. Romano beans are broad and flat. Musica is a pole bean, which means it needs support. I love it because it the beans are unusually large but very tender and so meaty. I call them the tenderloin of green beans. I just steam them, then toss them with EVOO, a little butter, salt and lemon juice, and oh, they are so tasty!

Ron Kanemoto, Yamagami's General Manager, loves Romano beans too. He doesn't care if they are bush or pole bean varieties. His grandmother grew them, so they are a childhood favorite. He even has a customer bring some in for him every year prepared with tomatoes and onions!

Alan Tagami, Yamagami's Landscape Consultant, loves Blue Lake pole beans because that is what his mother grows, another childhood favorite. He loves how tender they are and virtually stringless. He steams them and tosses them with a little butter and feasts.

Yamagami's offers oodles of varieties by seed and many already in seedling form. You can grow many of them in "bush" form if you'd rather not deal with building a support. No matter which variety you choose, it's a good idea to plant some every 2 weeks to extend your harvest over a longer period.

Click here for instructions for building a tepee for green beans. It's a project kids really enjoy playing in and around and somehow those green beans will always taste good! They will really get a kick out of the Tri-Color Pole beans from Renee's Garden Seed which produce green, gold and purple pods!

Shop at Yamagami's for a great selection of green beans and all your other summer vegetables as well as the products you need to succeed. Let our helpful Nursery Pros guide you to veggie garden success... the first time.

You say a creeping crud is showing up your neighborhood? Maybe a weird bug is visiting? Are plants mysteriously dying out or shriveling? Who ya gonna call? The Plant Doctor! Yamagami's Plant Doctor, Alan Tagami, is available to make house calls when you need professional on-site advice. The fee for his visit is $100 an hour with $50 returned as credit on merchandise. There is also a travel fee based on your zip code; it is the same fee as on our delivery chart, which can be found on our website, YamagamisNursery.com. The Plant Doc is reporting quite a few incidents of Bacterial Blast on apricot trees. Take a look at yours for withering new growth, die-back, or sap. You are not alone. Yamagami's Nursery and the Plant Doc have your back!

Coral Bells (Heucheras) have come a long way from dark green clumps. This sturdy genus of perennials has been hybridized extensively in the last few years. The result is an introduction of wonderful variations in foliage colors, leaf shapes, and flower colors. Newer varieties sport foliage in amber, bronze, burgundy, purple and ruby tones. Even the newest green-leafed varieties now come dressed up with silver veins, mottling or streaks. Many new cultivars also come with exquisite ruffled foliage.

Using Coral Bells in the landscape provides a contrast to other plants, making your garden more interesting. Adding bronze, silver, or purple foliage to the landscape brings out a new dimension of color. When these vibrant colors are placed next to green plants, your eye is drawn to the entire landscape--creating interest and depth. Most coral bells are easy to grow, forming evergreen mounds less than a foot high and across; the flowers appear 1-2' above the foliage.

Even their flower colors have benefited from breeding programs and now come in shades of bright pink, coral, red, cream, and white. The flowers provide an extra benefit to the garden by attracting hummingbirds, butterflies and beneficial insects to the garden. The spent flowers are easy to remove; you need only tug gently from the base of the stem to remove them.

Coral Bells prefer partly shaded locations. Once established, they need only moderate watering. Feed them regularly because the nutrients in plant foods help bring out deeper, more intense foliage color.

Some of the more vibrant varieties in stock include 'Crimson Curls', 'Georgia Peach', 'Silver Scroll' and 'Stoplight'.

Plant them in borders or in clusters of three or more, so that their sprays of blooms will have an even more dramatic effect in the garden. Coral Bells also make great container plants because they don't have an aggressive root system. Come in to Yamagami's to see our Coral Bell collection while supply is still good and add color, flair, and perennial pleasure to your garden. Our helpful Nursery Pros are here to help you succeed... the first time.

Attention all foodies! If you want the freshest locally grown produce for your favorite ethnic cuisine- grow it yourself! A gourmet garden doesn't have to be a large space investment. Even a container or two of the right herbs alone can provide that authentic fragrance and flavor.

For your own trattoria, try a grouping of romaine lettuce, basil and flat-leaf parsley in a pot or in a plot. Oregano and rosemary are easy to grow. Fresh paste tomatoes make scrumptious sauce. The fragrance of Italian long peppers on the grill will transport you. Romano beans are not easy to find but are easy to grow. Yamagami's also offers an Italian line of seeds, Pagano's, for authentic flavors.

If French cuisine is your passion, grow your own Herbes de Provence; a blend of thyme, savory, basil, fennel and lavender flowers. Make your own ratatouille with homegrown eggplant, zucchini, onions, peppers and tomatoes.

A few key ingredients bring Asian cuisines to life. Lemongrass (available later in May), Thai basil, and cilantro flavor many different dishes. Peppers, cucumbers, Japanese eggplants and green onion will grow in containers as easily as in the ground. For some more exotic vegetables, be sure to see Kitazawa Seeds for choices like winter melon and bitter melon.

For Mexican food, nothing beats salsa fresca made with homegrown peppers, tomatoes, onion and garlic. Yamagami's is the exclusive source for Villancho, an ancho pepper that makes un chile relleno muy bueno. Tomatillos are delicious for salsa verde (chile verde - yum!). Plant an avocado tree and a lime tree for guacamole--and of course those limes make the best margaritas!

No matter your culinary yearnings, fresh, homegrown produce will yield the best flavors for you table. Let the friendly Nursery Pros at Yamagami's Nursery help you plant your gastronomic garden of good eatin'. We are here to help you succeed... the first time.

If your lawn was ripped up during the night last fall, it was probably raccoons in search of tasty grubs. With those nimble hands, raccoons can just roll up your lawn like a carpet to find fat grubs. Prevention is the key to protecting your lawn from even more damage next fall. Timing is critical! Yamagami's recommends treating your lawn with Green Light Grub Control in April and again in August when grubs are active and most vulnerable.