White and green marbled leaves with yellow, red and orange flowers, the entirely edible plant makes a spicy and attractive addition to a salad, but more importantly, is a great way to control pests! 
Aphids love nasturtiums, and prefer them to other plants. They feed on leaves and produce a sweet honeydew as a byproduct, which ants then feed on. Ants actually farm the aphids, and bring them to "greener pastures" if you will, to get a sweeter honeydew. Nasturiums sweeten the honeydew just right, so the ants bring the aphids off the cucumbers and strawberries, and place them on the nasturiums! Planting freely throughout the garden ensures that, hopefully, the plants I eat, will be kept free of bugs, and that the bugs will get their fill from the nasturtiums. In the beginning of the season, the strawberries were covered with the little black bugs, (show now on the underside of the nasturtiums). However, as soon as I started to plant the nasturtiums, the aphids quickly moved away from the strawberries and onto the nasturtiums. The strawberries are virtually bug free! They collect in colonies on the leaves, so I can pick off heavily infested leaves, and eliminate a whole bunch in one fellow swoop. Organic gardening looks at the garden/farm as a whole ecosystem, of which I am just a part, so I must create an environment where I don't fight with bugs, but encourage them to feed on certain crops....just not the ones I want to eat.
The alligator looking thing is a lady bug larvae. Waa hoo! Lady bugs eat aphids and other garden pests. I hope it's ladies night, every night, at the frosty farm!
