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I love nasturtiums. I was luck enough to win some heirloom seeds from AT last season and really enjoyed them.

This year, I hope to have enough buds to pickle and use like capers.

Here's last year's:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_chel/sets/72157604843940692/

I love nasturtiums and I've tried growing them both in a pot and planted in the ground but every time they get aphids (or something similar) that wind up killing them before I even know they are there. They hide under the leaves so I don't even notice then until the plant starts dying. Since I want to be able to eat them, how can I prevent the aphids with out chemicals?

We had these growing in the garden when I was growing up and we'd often add them to sandwiches with cheese and ripe tomatoes. Yum.

Wow, edible flowers is just what I need to know about. I am making a wedding cake and called wholefoods to ask my friend the floral dept manager what I should use and she said most of the flowers probably have insecticides. I could pick some violets from my field but I was hoping to buy something white, like little roses, which are safe to eat if they aren't sprayed. Any suggestions what I can use to make it look pretty? Baking today decorating on Saturday. Fillling is lemon curd and strawberries. so pretty strawberries and greenery of violet and berry vines might work??

those little white flowers before the berries would be pretty. anybody know how they would hold up? I could keep them in water and put them around just before the cutting.??

Elissa-- last year my nasturtiums suffered the same fate-- but strangely none of my other herbs or flowers nearby got those weird bugs. Only the nasturtiums died...

I love nibbling on the flowers - but I've always thought you had to pluck off the petals and not eat the base of the flower - can you just the whole thing in your mouth?

In some older cookbooks, Victorian I believe, you can find recipes for sugaring or candying certain flowers. Nasturtiums are among them. Bet if you spent enough time with google, you could find some of them on the net.

Last summer mine were eaten to death within days by caterpillars. They attract cabbage white butterflies that lay eggs underneath the leaves. I didn't want to use pesticide on the edible plants and picking the pests off by hand was ineffective. They can be used as a decoy plant to attract pests away from crops like cabbage, cauliflower and broccolli, but I don't know how to save them without harmful chemicals.

elissa -- you could try planting some mint near your nasturtiums. as i understand it, aphids prefer mint to most other things. mint is sometimes suggested as a companion plant to roses because the aphids will go to the mint and leave the roses alone. i haven't tried that, and i might be wrong, so maybe someone can correct me.

i can say that aphids sure do love mint but don't seem to do it any harm. they were all over my mint plant last summer (indoors, so i guess they came from the farmers' market), but once i got over it and stopped fighting them, i realized that the plant itself was fine.