Marigold Flowers

[Gary350]

Companies that grow these flowers to sell make them look nice with 1 flower. After planting them at home the 1 and only flowers dies & becomes seeds and the plant grows no more flowers all summer then dies. I plant Marigold seeds and 99% never germinate the 1 plant that grows never has flowers. I give up, wife said, GOOD those flowers STINK.

[imafan26]

Actually, I usually only grow them from seed. The flower lasts a long time, at least a couple of months. It does reseed so, like alyssum, I just pull out the old ones and the new ones come up an bloom again in a few weeks. I save seeds as well, so I can plant more later. It is especially hard to get seeds of crackerjack (African species T. erecta), tangerine (T. patula dwarf french marigold), bolero (T. patula), and nemagone (single gold). I used them to control root knot nematodes. I can also use sunn hemp as a cover crop to do the same thing. Sunn hemp is a lot harder to pull out, but the deeper roots do kill the deep nematodes better.