Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are one of my favorite flowers in the garden. They're beautiful, they self-seed, and you can eat both the flowers and the leaves.

I usually plant a trailing mix. The mix has flowers with one of two colors: bright orange, or bright gold with an orange splash at the base of each petal. Here's a picture of some that I planted this year. All the flowers are either that bright orange or the bright gold.

But since nasturtiums self-seed, the seedlings come up as mixtures of those two flowers bred to each other and to themselves (compliments of the bumblebees that love them), and there's a greater variety of colors.

These flowers are a result of nasties I planted three years ago, and that have self-seeded every year. Notice the softer orange of the flowers on the left. And look at the soft yellow with orange streaks in the flower below. You never get these colors out of the seeds in the seed package.

I have to admit, though, that I don't eat them. I'm not really crazy about the peppery taste.