H-Bird Puts Whammy On Nasturtiums!~

Took this photo two days ago of a hummingbird putting the whammy on some nasturtiums. Here is the back story. Two years ago some nasturtiums snuck through my fence. I took a cutting and put it in water. A month later the cutting sprung roots. I planted the cutting outside and the rest is history. Now I have nasturtiums growing all over. This plant produces pods—I now have several hundred dried pods in a paper bag inside the house. In the spring I’ll put the seed pods in the ground and in about three weeks I’ll have a new crop of nasturtiums putting out flowers for most of the year. The honeybees feast on the nasturtiums as do butterflies and humming birds. I also played nature boy and ate some of the the leaves and the flowers, but the taste was not remarkable. Also, the seed pods can be put in a coffee grinder—the end result is a peppery spice.

The nasturtium doesn’t require much water, in fact, if you water too much, you’ll get green leaves and very few flowers.

The point of all of this is that nasturtiums are an integral part of my backyard eco-system. An additional use is that I put some nasturtiums in pots that I hang from a fence, about five feet from the ground. I find that aphids and mites focus on these potted plants while leaving the other in-ground nasturtiums alone along with roses and other plants that had been infested with mites and other insects prior to the planting of nasturtiums.

And maybe best of all, the nasturtiums cost nothing other than my time and a little water.