edible oddities

there are a few things growing in my garden that are a little out of the ordinary, foodwise. there are certainly many people who know more about edible flowers than me, but for those who have never eaten a flower before, they make very pretty garnishes for salads and such. my favorite edible flower is the nasturtium. they have relatively large, brightly coloured fancy flowers, and aesthetically pleasing round leaves. both are edible. they taste sort of peppery/hot, a bit like a radish.


(the one on the right is the nasturtium flower! the other flower is a marigold. i'm actually not sure if those are edible or not).

the other edible oddity that i am growing this year is radish pods. i find that my radishes often bolt (go to seed too early) when the weather is hot and dry. i used to just pull them out, write them off, and start over when that happened. then i discovered that radish seed pods are edible! when mine started to bolt this spring, i left them in the ground to do their thing. they are now producing tons of pods. i like them, almost more than radish roots, because you can simply pluck them and eat them; they taste almost the same as their belowground counterparts. no need to pull up, remove greens, or clean dirt off. the tips are a little fibrous so i usually trim them a bit, and they get quite tall/gangly so you have to watch to make sure they don't shade out any of your other plants, but other than that, they're quite neat!