04/04/2024
“The Marigold is the poor man’s sunflower.”
Marigolds get a bad rap; they’re often thought of as the wallflower of the flower garden, but they’re the shining star when planted among your vegetables!
So why bother planting them among your tomatoes, cucumbers and other summer delights? And why bother growing your own from seed or purchasing starter plants from a grower like me? Let me offer my thoughts and opinions on these questions.
Here are just three of the many benefits of growing marigolds around your garden:
They repel aphids - Foliage and flowers are aromatic when brushed or crushed and the scent repels aphids and other pests such as nematodes, slugs, and other pests that love to munch on tomatoes.
As if repealing aphids and other pests that come to decimate your vegetable or rose garden isn’t enough reason to love these bright balls of sunshine, here’s another one! Marigolds attract bees and other pollinators. Our bees need healthy, chemical-free flowers on which to gather nectar, and organically grown marigolds are perfect for this.
They can be used as a trap plant. I hate the idea of seeing Japanese Beatles munching their lunch on lovely marigolds, but I’d rather see them there than on my tomatoes! Plus they’re easier to see on the yellow petals so I can conveniently knock them off into a container of soapy water.
The flowers are edible! You might wonder how a flower that stinks could be worth sticking in your mouth, but adding their petals to salads or using them as decoration on a cake is a great idea.
Why not buy flats of marigolds from the big box stores? Ok, this is where my opinion based on personal experience comes in. I used to have a horrible problem with slugs in my garden - baby slugs, medium slugs and slugs so big I thought the head of a snake was poking up from the soil!
I had always purchased marigolds and petunias from Wallymart - I couldn’t see any point in paying extra for pops of color and aphid detractors. But one year I started growing these flowers from seed in organic soil, using natural fertilizers and I noticed a huge drop in the number of slugs. I don’t know what these stores use in their soil to help the plants grow, but my head wondered if it’s similar to Mir….Grow. I stopped using any of those products and although I don’t have any scientific proof that there’s something in the soil that attracts slugs, my experience tells me there is. I still get slugs, but nothing compared to what I got when I bought plants grown in questionable soil.
I hope you’ll give marigolds a try this year. I sell tall marigolds (African, American, Aztec). I’ve done this for years also and they make a beautiful addition next to my tomatoes and mix well with the other plants in my garden beds.
