Last summer, I grew quite a few different marigold varieties from seed and I thought it might be helpful to share some tips. Unfortunately, my favourite variety, a traditional red-orange marigold called Durango Flame, was unavailable last year but it was an opportunity for me to try growing some other varieties. I raised the following marigolds from seed last spring:
They are all African marigold varieties which are taller and have quite big heads compared to other marigolds. I purchased these from the Egmont Seeds Commercial catalogue, which is available upon request from Egmont Seeds if you live in New Zealand. If you live elsewhere, please check if seed suppliers in your country stock these varieties if you would like to grow them. You might not necessarily be able to find them on the shelf at your local garden centre, so try reputable mail order seed suppliers. I planted all my marigolds in troughs and some different shaped containers because I ran out of room, as the garden beds occupied all my dahlias and veggie seedlings and were very full. But marigolds do make a great bedding plant and look nice planted along borders. They are also a very good companion plant as they help keep insects off other plants. When I was a child, one of our neighbours was a rose aficionado and they comprised her entire garden. She always planted marigolds along the edges of her garden beds and explained to me that was why she did that. It also looks really nice when marigolds are planted in this way. Unfortunately the display shown in the photo was very short lived as we had a terrible summer in Auckland. I think my plants only looked like that for a week or two. There were cyclones and floods which did a lot of damage to my marigolds and they never quite bounced back afterwards. But in normal circumstances, marigolds have always provided me with a display which lasts several months until it starts getting cool in autumn. Tips for growing marigolds If you are new to gardening, you could always purchase a punnet or two from the garden centre to see if you like growing them. If you have been gardening for awhile and are comfortable with and enjoy propagating plants from seed but have never grown marigolds before, you could always purchase a small packet of seeds from either a garden centre or a mail order seed supplier, which usually costs a couple of dollars. If you wish to plant a lot of seedlings, it is always more economical to raise them from seed. You can also get bigger packets of seed if you purchase your seeds from a mail order wholesale or commercial catalogue. This also ensures that you will have enough of the same variety to complete a border. Garden centres may only have a limited number of plants and other customers might have already purchased some from the tray, so there might not be enough for your needs. But if you are time poor and money isn’t an issue, you could always ask your garden centre if you can order large quantities. They might be able to help you and it never hurts to ask nicely. Bigger packets of seed can also be helpful if you are running a plant nursery and selling plants, as I have done in the past. Growing marigolds from seed also enables you to grow varieties which are not available in garden centres. I generally find that plants propagated from seed are stronger and end up performing better when planted outside than punnets purchased from the garden centre. I think one of the reasons for this is because seedlings raised yourself are not exposed to so many different temperatures, whereas seedlings sold at garden centres started out in a nursery with artificial heating and lighting, before being transported to the garden centre and cared for on shelves. By the time you take them home, they have been exposed to so many different places and temperatures that they can end up quite shocked and not perform that well when they are eventually planted outside. I always sow marigold seeds on my heat pad in spring, as I have found that the warmth helps them to germinate at a time of the year when it is quite cold. But for the first time, I tried sowing the seeds in 198-cell seedling trays, with one seed per tiny cell. The germination rate was excellent and it helped the seedlings to form a plug, making it very easy to pluck them out and transplant them into 60 and 72 cell seedling trays to grow a bit more, before they were large enough and it was warm enough to plant them outside. After having great success using this technique, I don’t think I would ever go back to scattering the seeds in a punnet filled with seed raising mix again. It’s very fiddly separating the tender young seedlings and you risk damaging the roots in the process. Another tip I would like to share is to protect young seedlings from slugs and snails as they really love marigolds. This also applies to seedlings kept in your greenhouse and nursery, if you have one for raising seedlings. As it gets warmer, we always leave the doors of our greenhouse open. Despite the joke about snail pace, you would be surprised how far and fast slugs and snails can travel! They can be pretty determined when they have made up their mind that they really want to go somewhere. Even if your seedlings are stored on a shelf or higher surface, they can climb, too. Slugs and snails will also happily crawl into containers, so don’t forget to use some form of protection if you are using them to plant your marigolds in.
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