Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Marigolds for dia de los muertos


Happy halloween! I was hoping my marigolds would put out a big show of blooms for dia de los muertos, but they seem to be mostly done flowering for the year. They did pull off one impressive trick, though:

Marigold flowers and volunteer seedlingsTagetes patula seedling


They made babies. 


At first, I just assumed the little sprouts coming up everywhere were weeds. Fortunately, I weed the garden just about as often as I prune the dead blooms from my flowers. 

Marigold - dried flowers, seeds, and sprouts

Marigold (tagetes patula) seeds
Baby marigold plants
It will be interesting to see what kind of flowers these little guys produce, since I have a number of different styles growing. I don't actually know the actual variety or source of the parent plants. I usually just pick up a few six-packs of marigolds that look reasonably healthy and pretty when I'm getting spring vegetable seedlings, on the theory that the marigolds will repel insect pests. Most of them are immediately eaten by slugs. 

Fortunately, marigolds are cheap, and pretty much every nursery and garden center has them all the time, so I usually just keep replanting them until I get bored or the slugs do. This time I won. 

Orange marigolds (tagetes patula) on dia de los muertos

Yellow marigold flower