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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-011
Nasturtium
Tropaeolum majus
A fast-growing, sprawling or climbing annual grown for its round, edible leaves and long-blooming flowers in red, orange, yellow, cream and pink, all of which taste peppery like watercress or mustard. The unripe green seed pods pickle as a caper substitute, and the plant is widely used to draw aphids away from other crops and to attract pollinating insects. It thrives in poor to average soil in full sun, self-sows readily where the season allows seed to mature, and is killed outright by frost.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 2–11
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam
- Moisture
- Dry · Moderate · Well-Drained
Vertical layer
Groundcover- Soil pH
- Not yet recorded
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 1–10 ft
- Mature spread
- 12–36 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Not yet recorded
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
Discover more plants with shared forest layers or growing conditions.
Bambara Groundnut
Vigna subterranea
Bambara groundnut is the drought crop of this group, producing a food-grade seed on ground too poor and too dry for peanut or soybean - it is…
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Barren Strawberry
Waldsteinia fragarioides
Barren Strawberry is a low woodland groundcover with strawberry-like leaves and yellow spring flowers, but despite the name and the leaf…
Groundcover · USDA 4–7
Beach Strawberry
Fragaria chiloensis
Beach strawberry is a low, evergreen, mat-forming strawberry native to Pacific coast dunes and bluffs from Alaska south through California to…
Groundcover · USDA 4–10
Bilberry
Vaccinium myrtillus
Bilberry is a low, suckering shrub of acid heaths and cool mountain woodland, spreading by rhizome into a knee-high mat. Its small dark…
Groundcover · USDA 3–7
Black Medick
Medicago lupulina
Black Medick is a low, sprawling nitrogen-fixing clover relative that forms a mowable mat through fall, winter and spring before dying back…
Groundcover · USDA 3–9
Carpet Bugle
Ajuga reptans
Carpet Bugle forms a fast, dense, rooting mat that thrives in dry shade - the hardest niche on most properties to fill, since dry ground…
Groundcover · USDA 3–10
The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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