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Growing Tagetes and Seed Collecting

Growing Tagetes and Seed Collecting

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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
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