{"id":13058,"date":"2015-02-26T00:46:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T07:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13058"},"modified":"2015-02-22T03:12:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T10:12:41","slug":"growing-nasturtium-as-a-food-crop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/gardening\/tips\/growing-nasturtium-as-a-food-crop\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Nasturtium  a Peppery Food Crop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Nasturtium by Dvortygirl, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/dvortygirl\/2376637604\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2230\/2376637604_69c3113eb0.jpg\" alt=\"Nasturtium\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I think of Nasturtium as an ornamental, annual, flowering plant but my vegetarian children take a different view. For many vegetarians &#8216;Nasturtiums make a salad&#8217;. In the case of Watercress they also make a soup and a vegetable.<\/p>\n<h3>Growing Nasturtium Leaves, Flowers and Seed Pods<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Grow Nasturtiums from seed in your vegetable patch.<\/li>\n<li>Rich soil will encourage leaves at the expense of flowers. Nasturtiums grown for decoration need a poor soil.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.awin1.com\/cread.php?awinmid=2283&amp;awinaffid=81944&amp;clickref=&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thompson-morgan.com\/plants1\/search.html?section=all&amp;search=nasturtium\"> Nasturtium seeds from Thompson &amp; Morgan<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Before planting Nasturtiums in containers make sure they are well rooted in smaller pots started under cover.<\/li>\n<li>Watercress Nasturtium Microphyllum or Nasturtium Officionale are best grown from rooted cuttings. Rooting in water is relatively easy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a title=\"Salad: Watercress, spinach and apple. by ulterior epicure, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ulteriorepicure\/78216999\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/6\/78216999_f2c045ce88.jpg\" alt=\"Salad: Watercress, spinach and apple.\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Eating Nasturtium Leaves and Pods<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The leaves of the nasturtium plant are edible, with a peppery flavour. They can be tossed into salads mixed with sweeter varieties of lettuce.<\/li>\n<li>The flowers make a unique garnish to fresh foods and add a splash of colour.<\/li>\n<li>The seed pods can be treated like Capers and pickled or used as a crunchy addition to salads.<\/li>\n<li>For tastiest nasturtium leaves, keep the plants well watered, which helps to moderate the spiciness of the leaves and flowers. Keep a bit drier to add a sharper tangy flavour to your summer salads<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a title=\"nasturtiums by artolog, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/artolog\/13490418\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/11\/13490418_735a1183f6.jpg\" alt=\"nasturtiums\" width=\"500\" height=\"374\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Growing Watercress Nasturtium Officinale<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Watercress is called Nasturtium Officinale or Nasturtium Microphyllum<\/li>\n<li>Watercress is traditionally grown in gardens with chalk streams or a good supply of water as a semi-aquatic plant<\/li>\n<li>Buy watercress with roots on at your local supermarket<\/li>\n<li>An ordinary bunch placed in a bowl of fresh clean water will develop roots. Discard any that turn yellow or do not root and plant the rest.<\/li>\n<li>You can grow watercress in a container but keep it exceptionally well watered.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a title=\"chicken watercress salad by aquino.paolo, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/aquino_paolo\/243103980\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/93\/243103980_bbda1d7bb0.jpg\" alt=\"chicken watercress salad\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip<\/strong><br \/>\nGrowing Nasturtiums near Brassicas can deflect greenfly and white fly on to the nasturtiums to protect your other crops.<br \/>\nPickling the seed pods of Nasturtium produces a crop similar to Capers.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Nasturtium-FowlersVacola-Num10-9108 by graibeard, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/graibeard\/4074077253\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3510\/4074077253_d2829ab4b3.jpg\" alt=\"Nasturtium-FowlersVacola-Num10-9108\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Credits<\/strong><br \/>\nNasturtium by Dvortygirl CC BY-SA 2.0<br \/>\nSalad: Watercress, spinach and apple. by ulterior epicure CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<br \/>\nnasturtiums by artolog CC BY-NC 2.0<br \/>\nchicken watercress salad by aquino.paolo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<br \/>\nNasturtium-FowlersVacola-Num10-9108 by graibeard CC BY-SA 2.0 Pickled Nasturtium seeds look like and taste similar to capers.<br \/>\nNasturtiums by robynejay CC BY-SA 2.0<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Nasturtiums by robynejay, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/learnscope\/3612830801\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2462\/3612830801_6c1f30cbe6.jpg\" alt=\"Nasturtiums\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watercress is a variety of Nasturtium and  makes a soup and a vegetable whilst the floral Nasturtiums we think about has tangy peppery leaves edible flowers and seeds you can crunch or pickle. A versatile food crop to grow in you veg plot of streamside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vegetables-herbs","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}