After my interest was piqued in making a gentle, effective and natural skin salve for my little ones {2-legged and 4-legged alike} I've started to understand the inner-beauty of flowers, adding a few ordinary looking flowers to my must-try/useful plants list. One flower on the list is Pot Marigolds (aka calendula).
{Calendula oil by flickr member Leila-Anne}
Finding calendula became something of an obsession, but my search all summer was to no avail. That is until this past week when I found a solitary pack of seeds marked Calendula, Apricot daisy while rifling through a ravaged seed rack at Lowe's. No scientific name, nothing real specific, but I forked over 3 dollars and went home and researched the variety. Sure enough I'd found what I was looking for: Calendula officinalis.
{My seed starting set up; Seed pic from Wikipedia.}
Calendula has historically been used for its anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties making it useful for alleviating a variety of skin problems, while its other name, Pot Marigold, hints at its ability to keep pests like tomato hornworms and asparagus beetles out of the veggie patch. I want it for the flowers: to grow, dry, and add to plaintain/comfrey oil to make more salve.
Check out those jagged, skeletal seeds. Don't they look like doll house sized Halloween decorations? While the blooms stretch the fall color spectrum from deep, pumpkin orange to a delicate, pale, faded yellow; what a perfect way to welcome autumn.
{Balcony grown calendula by flickr members Maija and Lauri, aka fiikus}
Since this is a new plant to my garden, I don't have the knowledge that comes from experience so I've read around on the internet to get a good grasp of what they like: cool, temperate fall weather, grow in a wide variety of soil types and they're fine with full sun to partial shade. They don't like being over watered and do like to have room to stretch their arms out, so don't overcrowd them. Sounds simple enough! I'm ready to give it a go.
What are your favorite unassuming-but-spectacular fall flowers? Any favorite varieties of calendula in your repertoire? Anyone want to send me some seeds? No? Well, it was worth a try!
Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise. When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.
actually, i have saved tons of calendula seeds this year! they re-seed themself and spread and are just great! let me know. ; )
Posted by: kendra | Sep 17, 2010 at 02:09 PM