Top Five Flowers from Seeds!

You paid $8 for a tiny plastic clamshell of edible flowers at Whole Foods. Six pansies, maybe three nasturtiums, already wilting at the edges. That’s the going rate for something you can grow from a $3 seed packet — enough to harvest for an entire summer.

Edible flowers aren’t exotic or precious. They’re just one of those ingredients restaurants charge a premium for because home cooks assume they’re difficult to source. They’re not. You need the right five, and a little patience in spring.

Why the Price of Store-Bought Edible Flowers Is Absurd

A packet of nasturtium seeds from Burpee costs $3.49. One healthy plant yields 50 to 100 flowers across a season. Whole Foods charges $7.99 for eight. Grow three plants and you’ll never buy them again — and you’ll have enough to give away.

The Five Best Edible Flowers from Seed — At a Glance

These five flowers earn their place because they germinate fast, tolerate beginner mistakes, and actually contribute flavor in the kitchen — not just color. Every one of them grows reliably from direct sow or a simple indoor start with no special equipment.

One important note on varieties: always buy seeds specifically labeled as edible or culinary. Not every pansy sold at garden centers is a variety you want in your food. Park Seed’s ‘Sorbet Series’ and Johnny’s Selected Seeds cultivars are grown specifically for culinary markets, which matters both for flavor and for peace of mind about what you’re eating.

Nasturtiums — Start Here

Nasturtiums are the most useful edible flower you can grow. That’s not a hedged opinion. Chefs use them constantly — not just for visual impact, but for actual flavor. They taste like watercress crossed with black pepper, which means they do real work in a dish rather than just sitting there looking pretty.

What Nasturtiums Actually Taste Like

Both the flowers and the leaves are edible, and both carry heat. The flowers are milder — throw them whole into a green salad and they contribute a gentle pepper warmth and a pop of orange or yellow. The leaves are stronger and work well chopped into compound butter or blended into a nasturtium pesto. Swap half your basil for nasturtium leaves in a standard pesto recipe — the result is sharper and more complex than basil alone.

The seed pods, harvested green before they dry, work as a caper substitute. Pickle them in white wine vinegar with salt and a pinch of sugar. They’re not identical to capers, but they’re close enough to replace them in pasta, salads, and smoked fish dishes — and they cost you nothing beyond a few minutes of effort.

How to Grow Nasturtiums from Seed

Direct sow outdoors after last frost. Push seeds about 1 inch deep, 10–12 inches apart, in a spot with full sun to light shade. Nasturtiums resent transplanting — their roots don’t like being disturbed — so skip the indoor start entirely.

Here’s the counterintuitive part: don’t fertilize them. Rich, amended soil produces massive leafy plants with almost no flowers. Nasturtiums in poor to average soil flower aggressively all season. This is the number-one mistake first-time growers make — they give nasturtiums the same bed they’d give tomatoes and end up with lush green mounds and no blooms until August. Neglect them a little. They respond to it.

Burpee’s ‘Jewel Mix’ is the standard for good reason: compact habit, warm mixed tones (red, orange, yellow), and consistent germination. If you want trailing plants that spill from a container or window box, Burpee’s ‘Tall Climbing Mix’ is the variety to order. For something more unusual, Thompson & Morgan’s ‘Alaska’ has cream-variegated foliage that looks striking even before flowering, and ‘Empress of India’ produces deep crimson blooms against dark leaves with a noticeably stronger pepper flavor.

Harvest Window and Yield

Nasturtiums begin blooming roughly 50–60 days from sowing and don’t stop until frost. A single established plant will produce multiple flowers per day at peak season. Pick regularly — the more you harvest, the more the plant produces. Leave flowers on the plant to go to seed and it will slow down significantly.

Borage, Calendula, Viola, and Chamomile — What Each Does in the Kitchen

1. Borage (Borago officinalis) — The star-shaped blue flowers taste unmistakably of cucumber. Freeze them into ice cubes for cocktails and water pitchers: they look striking and the flavor comes through as the ice melts. Chop flowers into tzatziki, fold them into cream cheese, or drop them into a gin and tonic. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds carries borage reliably, and it germinates fast — usually within a week of direct sowing outdoors. One caution: borage self-seeds prolifically. Plant it somewhere you don’t mind it returning next year uninvited, because it will.
2. Calendula (Calendula officinalis) — Dried calendula petals are called “poor man’s saffron” for their coloring effect on rice and soups, though the flavor is nothing like real saffron — mildly bitter, slightly resinous. Fresh petals are more interesting: scatter them over roasted root vegetables or stir them into a vinaigrette. The cultivar ‘Flashback’ from Johnny’s Selected Seeds produces large, multi-petal flower heads in a range of orange and yellow shades, with high petal yield per plant. It’s also one of the fastest to bloom — 45 days from sowing to first flower is realistic.
3. Viola and Pansy (Viola tricolor and cultivars) — The mildest flower on this list, and the one most suited to dessert work. The flavor is faintly sweet and green, but subtle enough that you’re mostly growing them for visual effect. Press fresh violas onto iced shortbread cookies before the icing sets and they fuse into the surface. Scatter them over a simple vanilla buttercream cake and the result looks professional. Park Seed’s ‘Sorbet Series’ produces smaller flowers than standard pansies, which makes them easier to work with as garnishes. Sow indoors 10–12 weeks before last frost — violas need light to germinate, so press seeds onto the soil surface rather than burying them.
4. Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) — You can dry chamomile for tea, but fresh flowers have a brighter, more apple-forward quality than the dried version. Use fresh flowers to infuse milk for panna cotta or custard: steep 10–15 flowers in 1 cup of warm whole milk for 20 minutes, then strain. Make chamomile simple syrup by simmering fresh flowers with equal parts sugar and water — it keeps in the refrigerator for two weeks and works well in lemonade, cocktails, and shortbread. Territorial Seed Company sells German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), which is the culinary variety you want. Roman chamomile is the ornamental species and lower in the aromatic compounds that give the flavor real depth.

How to Actually Use These Flowers Once You Have Them

Most people who grow edible flowers use them as garnish and stop there. That’s underusing them. These flowers have enough flavor to function as real ingredients.

Nasturtium compound butter: soften 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter, fold in 10–12 torn nasturtium flowers, a pinch of flaky salt, and a squeeze of lemon. Roll in plastic wrap, refrigerate until firm, slice onto grilled fish or roasted corn. The pepper heat cuts cleanly through the fat.

Borage ice cubes deserve far more attention than they get. Fill an ice cube tray halfway with water, freeze solid, then place one borage flower face-down into each partially frozen cube. Top with water and freeze again. The two-pour method keeps the flower centered rather than floating to the top. Drop these into any summer drink you’re serving.

Calendula rice: add 2 tablespoons of fresh petals to white rice for the last 5 minutes of cooking. The rice picks up a golden color and a mildly floral note that works well alongside roasted chicken or baked fish. Nothing elaborate — just a detail that changes the dish.

For chamomile: make the syrup. It’s the most versatile thing to do with a chamomile harvest. Drizzle it over vanilla ice cream, add it to an iced tea, or use it in place of plain simple syrup in a whiskey sour. Subtle, but immediately identifiable as something more considered than straight sugar.

Mistakes That Kill Your Edible Flower Season

These aren’t theoretical concerns. These are the errors that result in plants that don’t produce or flowers that aren’t safe to eat.

Using Flowers Treated with Pesticides

This is the most serious mistake on the list. Flowers sold in the ornamental section of garden centers — even if they’re an edible species — are routinely treated with systemic pesticides like imidacloprid. These chemicals are inside the plant tissue and can’t be washed off the surface. Grow from untreated seed, or buy transplants only from vendors who certify edible or culinary use. Burpee, Baker Creek, and Johnny’s Selected Seeds all sell untreated edible flower seeds. Never harvest from garden center transplants unless you can confirm their chemical history.

Planting Too Late in the Season

Nasturtiums, borage, and calendula want to go in the ground shortly after last frost — not midsummer. Sow in late spring and you get three to four months of harvest. Plant in July and you’ll get a few weeks of flowers before heat stress or early fall shuts them down. Violas actually prefer cool weather — they’re best sown indoors in late winter for a spring harvest, or again in late summer for fall flowers.

Harvesting at the Wrong Time

Pick in the morning, after dew dries but before midday heat sets in. You want fully open flowers — not buds, not flowers beginning to fade. Buds haven’t developed full flavor. Flowers past their peak go bitter or soft. Harvest into a bowl lined with a damp paper towel and refrigerate immediately. Use within 24–48 hours. Beyond that, the texture degrades and they look flat on a plate no matter how carefully you arrange them.

Harvesting, Storage, and Common Questions

Can you eat the whole flower or just the petals?

Depends on the species. Nasturtium: the whole flower, including the nectar spur at the base. Borage: the whole star-shaped flower, but remove the black central stamen cluster for cleaner plating. Calendula: petals only — the green base and bracts are bitter. Viola and pansy: the whole flower, though removing the small white or pale base of each petal gives a cleaner flavor. Chamomile: the whole flower head for infusions; petals only for garnish.

How long do harvested flowers actually keep?

24 to 48 hours refrigerated, loosely wrapped in damp paper towel inside a sealed container. Don’t wash until right before use — moisture speeds up decay. Violas hold up longest. Borage wilts fastest and should be used the same day it’s picked.

Do edible flowers freeze well?

Only in ice — that’s the one method that works. Freezing destroys the cell structure of fresh petals and leaves you with discolored mush. If you need to preserve a large harvest, dry calendula and chamomile on a mesh screen in a warm, ventilated spot for 5–7 days. Candy violas with egg white and superfine sugar — they’ll keep for weeks in an airtight tin. Nasturtiums and borage don’t preserve well by any method. They’re fresh ingredients. Use them fresh or not at all.

Are all cultivars of these species safe to eat?

For the five on this list, yes — but confirm with the seed packet. Some ornamental calendula cultivars have been hybridized far from the culinary species; stick with Calendula officinalis specifically. For chamomile, use Matricaria chamomilla (German chamomile). Anthemis tinctoria — dyer’s chamomile — looks similar and is not recommended for consumption. When in doubt, the seed packet will say “edible” or “culinary” if it’s the right variety.