Organic. Period.

Marigolds are in my garden every year. They grow like weeds. Really. I have a patch in the garden where I just let them reseed, and then I transplant the seedlings.

I started out with some kind of huge-showy-double-ruffle-flower packet of hybrid seeds about 15 years ago. I’ve been letting them reseed since that first summer. Some of the plants have lots of green foliage and small, single petal flowers.

Most of them bloom as nice, medium-sized flowers with pretty ruffled petals.

I use marigolds in companion planting.  I put a plant every so often along the row with both  tomatoes and peppers. Marigolds are beneficial in keeping harmful root knot nematodes away from the roots of tomatoes and peppers. It works if you grow the plants nearby, but you can also chop up leaves, stems, and flowers and mix them into the soil around your tomatoes and peppers. I’ve been using pieces of marigolds as mulch, or mixed in with the mulch around my tomatoes and peppers, and I haven’t had problems like I used to.

Select some seeds from the prettiest flowers to save. You can start them indoors, or let them overwinter and come up on their own. They always seem to know exactly when the weather is right for germinating!

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