🧡 When to Plant Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are one of the easiest flowers to grow from seed — fast, cheerful, and entirely edible, with a peppery bite to the leaves and blooms. They thrive on neglect: poor soil and no fertilizer actually give you more flowers. Use the calendar above to sow at the right time for your zone, since they grow quickly and don’t like having their roots disturbed.

Top Growing Tips

• Direct sow after frost — they grow fast and don’t transplant well
• Grow in poor-to-average soil with no fertilizer; rich soil means leaves, not flowers
• Flowers, leaves, and young seed pods are all edible (peppery, like watercress)
• Use as a trap crop to pull aphids and cabbage worms off your vegetables
• Soak seeds overnight before sowing to speed up their hard-coated germination

Recommended Varieties

Nasturtiums come in three habits — pick by where you want them to grow. They all bloom from late spring until your first fall frost, so the choice is about form, not timing.

Bush / dwarf (tidy 6–18 inch mounds for beds, edging, and containers):

• Tom Thumb — compact 6–9 inch plants in bright yellow, red, and orange
• Alaska — bushy, with cream-and-green variegated leaves that earn their keep even before bloom
• Empress of India — compact, with brilliant crimson flowers over dark blue-green foliage; excellent in containers
• Jewel series — dwarf and bushy, with fluted semi-double petals
• Whirlybird — 12–18 inches, with upward-facing, spurless semi-double flowers

Trailing (3–4 foot spread for hanging baskets, window boxes, and ground cover):

• Troika and Jewel of Africa — long ramblers, both with variegated foliage
• Kaleidoscope Mix — a full range of colors on cascading stems

Climbing: Canary Creeper (Tropaeolum peregrinum) is the one that genuinely climbs — given a trellis it reaches 8–12 feet, with fringed bright-yellow flowers. Note that the “climbing” trailing types have no tendrils and won’t scale a wall on their own; they ramble and need tying.

Spacing, Sun & Soil

Full sun gives the most flowers (they tolerate part shade in hot southern zones). Space plants 10-12 inches apart. Lean, well-drained soil is ideal — do not amend heavily and do not fertilize. Consistent moisture helps establishment, but established plants are quite drought-tolerant.

Common Problems

• All leaves, no flowers: soil is too rich or too shaded — stop feeding, move to full sun
• Aphids: expected (that’s the trap-crop job) — hose them off or remove the worst leaves; ladybugs and hoverflies usually follow
• Leaf miner / cabbage white caterpillars: pick off affected leaves; the plant shrugs off light damage

Companion Planting

Good companions: tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, cabbage and other brassicas, beans — an excellent trap crop that also draws in beneficial predators

Avoid planting near: none — nasturtiums are beneficial companions throughout the garden

Harvest Timeline

Flowering begins 50-60 days from seed and continues until frost. Pick flowers and young leaves in the morning and use fresh within a day or two; harvest green seed pods while tender to pickle as “poor man’s capers.”

A single spring sowing blooms all the way to your first fall frost, so succession sowing usually isn’t needed. In long-season zones (9–11), a second sowing in late summer brings fresh plants for fall once the worst heat passes.