Growing Tagetes and Seed Collecting
Tagete tenuifolia is one of my favourites of the marigold family. It generally has many small single flowers over a long period. Whilst the red,orange and yellow colour combinations are striking the French, African and Mexican Marigolds cousins are blousy and brash by comparison.
Growing Tagetes
- The foliage has a musky, pungent scent. The smell deters some common insect pests and I grow them alongside my greenhouse tomatoes.
- Tagetes are often used in companion planting for eggplant, chili pepper and potato.
- Tagetes grow well in fertile heavy clay soils and in sandy soils
- Plants are not frost resistant and need to be grown as half hardy annuals.
Seed Collecting
- Tagetes need a long growing season to set seed in Britain. Sow in March for flowering in autumn
- Removing dead flowers before the seed is formed will extend the flowering season but reduce seed production.
- Each of the multitude of flowers will produce a clutch of seeds trapped in the soft semi open seedhead.
- The seeds are like small, fine quills with a black section and an off white feathery end that protrudes from the clutch.
- Collect when dry with the seedhead turning brown. The neck bends down prior to dispersing seeds.
- Store in an old envelope and avoid trapped moisture that can cause rot.
- I do not have any success with self-sown seeds so I collect my own seeds from the many produced.
Tagetes, ‘Tagetes Patula, Tagetes Lucida, Tagetes Minuta, Tagetes Erecta, Bolivian Coriander, Adenophyllum Porophylloid’ is the only book specifically on the species that I can find.
Other Names and Varieties
- Many varieties are available from Thompson Morgan
- Tagetes minuta is a weed in some areas known as Stinking Roger.
- French marigolds are really Tagetes patula.
- Pot Marigolds are not Tagetes but are Calendulas
- Tagetes Tenuifolia Lemon Gem is a bright 8″ high lemon flowering plant.
- Other Pictures