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Nasturtiums: 5 Reasons To Grow Them

Nasturtiums are a workhorse farm flower that many gardeners plant simply for their beauty and carefree nature. The truth is that nasturtiums serve many important roles in a garden; we shouldn’t just grow them for their good looks alone.

1. Nasturtiums Are Edible

If you haven’t nibbled a nasturtium blossom, it’s time. Their fresh, peppery flavor is a spectacular way to spice up a salad or sandwich, or top a cracker spread with cream cheese. There are many recipes using nasturtiums cooked as well, including my favorite: stuffed with goat cheese, battered and fried. Nasturtiums can also be candied for use on cakes, tarts and other desserts. Oh, and the leaves are edible, too.

Pricing and selling nasturtiums in the edible flower market can also contribute to a profitable farm income.

2. They’re Aphid Nurseries

You’re probably asking yourself why I would include this in a list of positive nasturtium attributes, but the truth is, if you don’t have a few plants that aphids love in your garden, you won’t have a good population of ladybugs, lacewings and other beneficial insects around either. Nasturtiums can tolerate a ton of aphids feeding on them with little ill effects, so having them around as an aphid nursery means they can also help grow a healthy population of beneficial insects who can keep pest outbreaks on other plants in check.

3. Nasturtiums Make a Great Living Mulch

Trailing nasturtium varieties spread very quickly and cover a lot of ground, making an unwelcoming environment for weeds as they do. The soil in a garden with a cover of nasturtium foliage is shaded, which helps suppress weed seed germination. A living mulch of nasturtiums might also prevent excess moisture loss from the soil due to evaporation, and it helps shade the soil to keep it a bit cooler during hot summer weather.

4. They Provide Food for Pollinators

Nasturtium blossoms are a great nectar source for a wide variety of insects, including long-tongued bumblebees and butterflies. You’ll also find hummingbirds enjoying the nectar the blooms produce. That long spur you find at the back of the flower is where the nectar is found, so only certain creatures can access it, but those that do, are a joy to watch in the garden. Nasturtiums are quite floriferous, too, with most plants in constant bloom from mid-summer through fall’s first frost.

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5. Nasturtiums Provide Excellent Toad Habitat

The bug-eating prowess of toads often goes unappreciated by farmers, but the truth is that every morning and every evening, toads patrol the garden, lapping up ants, slugs, beetles and scores of other insects. Even if you seldom spot a toad in your landscape during the day, know that there are still likely to be many around. During warm, sunny weather, toads take shelter, nestling under mulch, in cavities or under a cooling canopy of foliage. And guess what plant’s foliage makes a great canopy for toads? That’s right, nasturtiums. Their…

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24 Best Crops to Grow in 2024: Fruits, Veggies & Herbs

What crops to grow tops many farmer’s and backyard gardener’s lists. Here’s our list of the 24 best crops to grow for fruits, vegetables and herbs. This is not a “sexiest crops of 2024” list. This list is more about reliability than it is about trends. They have been tested in an area that typically sees six frost-free months in zone 6b. From this list, you may find the inspiration you need to get your 2024 garden off to a good start.crops-for-2024Carmen Peppers
PHOTOS BY LISA MUNNIKSMA

1. Carmen Peppers

I don’t prefer peppers, but I found one variety that I savor: the sweet Italian Carmen frying peppers. I could have left this vegetable-diary entry at “sweet Italian peppers,” but I’ve tried a few varieties and find Carmens are the most suited for my garden and my taste.

I also prefer the red over the yellow, but that might be about looks more than flavor.crops-for-2024Garden Huckleberries
PHOTOS BY LISA MUNNIKSMA

2. Garden Huckleberries

Don’t confuse garden huckleberries — nightshades, growing in clusters on long, upright stalks —with wild huckleberries. Green, unripe garden huckleberries are toxic when ingested in quantity; ripe but raw, they’re mildly acerbic; but cook them down with sugar, and they make an unforgettable ultraviolet-colored freezer jam that tastes like a grape-blueberry combination.

3. Borage

Borage is a great medicinal herb. The blue flowers make yummy cucumber-flavored additions to salads, and bumblebees flock to the blooms. Borage can grow quite tall, and it’ll reseed next season. I appreciate that borage can withstand some frost, keeping color in the garden a little longer.

4. Thornless Blackberries

Friends gave me a few thornless blackberry canes when I moved to this farm, and they weren’t sure of the variety. I wish I knew.

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Each year, I harvest gallons of blackberries through the entire month of July from a 15-foot row. Besides pruning them back in the winter, I perform no upkeep on these plants.

Blackberries aren’t my favorite fruit, but the cost-benefit exchange puts them on my top-24 list.crops-for-2024Salt & Pepper Cucumbers
PHOTOS BY LISA MUNNIKSMA

5. Salt & Pepper Cucumbers

The yellow-white skin of these pickling cucumbers throws off some people, but they’ve outproduced the rest of the pickling cucumbers I’ve tried growing, so I don’t mind the color.

My garden has an intense Mexican bean beetle population with a taste for cucurbits. These cucumbers get going before the beetles show up and just keep growing while under siege.

6. Mexican Sour Gherkins

I learned about Mexican sour gherkins — aka cucamelons (pictured on this issue’s cover) or mouse melons —years ago at the Key West Community Garden in Key West, Florida. The vines look like delicate cucumber plants. The fruits look like tiny watermelons and taste like tangy cucumbers. They’re crisp and delicious when fresh and pickle well. They’re fun to bring to potlucks, too. I never seem to grow enough of them.

7-9. Three Toms

Every garden needs some…

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How to Make a Hotbed & Grow Sweet Corn Transplants

How to make a hotbed is useful for growing vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers and tropical plants. As a bonus learn how to grow sweet corn transplants.

What is a Hotbed?

A hotbed is basically a garden bed heated by decomposing organic material such as manure that allows year-round cultivation. A greenhouse or cold frame is used to trap the heat.

Various crops can be grown in hotbeds, such as vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers and tropical plants. The technique is useful in extending the growing season, and after some practice, it could even be used to grow tropical plants (if you have a taste for horse-manure pineapples!).

How to Make a Hotbed

A hotbed could be made by building a box around three feet deep and four-to-six-feet-square. Bricks, lumber or straw could be used as building materials. If you don’t have any materials and don’t mind the work, you can make an even better hotbed by digging a pit with the same dimensions.

Obtain some manure, preferably horse manure containing around one-third of straw or other bedding. Place the manure in a pile, compact it and wait three to four days until it gets warm. Turn it over, compact it again and wait another three to four days. Now the manure should be ready to be placed in the hotbed.

Fill the hotbed with manure, and tamp it down so that the depth is one to two feet. Add six to eight inches of topsoil and a south-facing cold frame on top to keep in the heat. Don’t plant immediately as the hotbed will reach high temperatures for several days. You can safely plant when the temperature drops to 85°F or slightly lower.

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Using & Maintaining a Hotbed

Maintaining the hotbed will require some skill in opening the frames in mild weather and covering them in very cold nights, but overall, you’ll be surprised at the usefulness of this natural greenhouse. The heat generated from decomposing horse manure could last for several weeks to a few months, depending on various factors, including the size of the bed and the quality of the manure.

Generally, a hotbed will be warm for six to eight weeks. A hotbed makes a wonderful bed for growing pumpkins or other nutrient-loving plants in the summer.how-to-make-a-hotbedHotbeds provide bottom heat to transplants, enhancing germination and stimulating root growth.
PAUL MAGUIRE//STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Transplanting Sweet Corn

Transplanting sweet corn is an old technique that is sometimes used even today. Because plants get established quickly, farmers get an earlier crop as well as effective weed control without herbicides. Gaps in the field from ungerminated seeds are avoided as well as weed competition which leads to a better crop.

The old-school directions for transplanting corn is to prepare a plot of land much like a garden in fall. Scatter the seeds and cover with some straw to prevent birds from eating them. The following spring, the land where the crop will eventually grow…

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The following simple recipe for “Poverty Soup” — a hamburger soup

The following simple recipe for “Poverty Soup” — a hamburger-vegetable soup is from SurvivalBlog reader F.C.. It serves four adults. To save money, home-grown tomatoes and vegetables can be used instead, if you are a veggie gardener.

Ingredients
  • 1 to 1-1/2 lbs of ground beef (or venison, or ground turkey)
  • 1 can (10 oz) diced tomatoes and green chilies (or Rotel)
  • 16 oz. package of frozen mixed vegetables
  • 6-8 potatoes, peeled and diced to spoon size
  • 1 small onion diced, or equivalent in dehydrated onion flakes.
  • 6 beef bouillon cubes
  • 8 cups water
  • Salt, to taste
  • Pepper to taste
Directions
  1. Brown meat on stove top and drain grease.
  2. Combine all ingredients.
  3. Heat over low for about an hour.
  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Crockpot Variation

This simple recipe can also be cooked in a crockpot. Just brown the meat first and combine all ingredients in your crockpot. Cook on the low setting for 6-to-8 hours.

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Do you have a well-tested recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this weekly recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long-term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven recipes, slow cooker recipes, and any recipes that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

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Dear Diary, It’s Me, Jessica: Part 8

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Dear Diary,

It’s me, Jessica.

Diary, you will not believe who I ran into today . . . Savannah.

You remember her.  She was that bully at school who disliked me for no reason.

But hold on a sec.  I want to write down the rest of what happened with Justin and Janet and the kids before I forget . . .

The next morning, after the rain stopped, they were back on the road. It was still cool and damp, but the clear sky and rising sun were promising. Janet noticed that even the kids seemed glad to be back in the saddle as Justin alternated the horses between a quick walk and an easy trot.

It was around mid-morning when they came across a farmhouse.  Dogs enclosed in a chain link fence in the backyard barked at them as they approached.  White smoke was coming out of the chimney.  Someone was home.  As they came up to the drive, an old man came out on the front covered porch with a rifle.  He did not point it at them, but he could use it quickly if need be.  Justin held up his one hand but kept the other on his own rifle and said they did not mean any harm, just passing through.

Janet asked if there had been trouble.  The old man seemed to relax a bit.  He said there was some after the power went out.  But after the winter, they were the first people he had seen.  That is when a rooster crowed.  Justin then asked if the old man if he had eggs or be willing to part with a chicken.  The old man’s eyes narrowed and the muzzle of the rifle came up a bit.  Justin then quickly added he would be willing to trade for it.  The old man asked what Justin had in mind.  Justin slowly reached into the saddle bag and pulled out one of the handguns he took off the dead who attacked their home by the muzzle end, like he was holding a dead rat to show he was not going to use it.

The old man seemed to consider but said would not do him any good without ammo.  Justin offered two magazines, loaded.  Now the old man was much more agreeable, even smiled.  He seemed to consider and then offered two dozen eggs, laid today, a chicken, two onions, four carrots and four parsnips.  Would make for a good dinner, he said.  Justin pretended to consider, but really, the…

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These Backyard Projects Might Get Banned in the Future

To most, being on my own land means I should be able to do with it what I see fit. However, as most preppers have already experienced, this isn’t always the case. As local, state, and federal governments begin to seek control, we will see more legislation geared towards preventing us from preparing for our […]

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Creative Pumpkins: Top Novelty Varieties to Grow This Season

Novelty pumpkins are varieties of pumpkins grown primarily for their unique and interesting appearance rather than for their suitability as food. These pumpkins come in various shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. They are popular for decorative purposes especially during the fall and around Halloween. Common types of novelty pumpkins include white, warty, mini, long-stemmed, and […]

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