Landrace Gardening: Shithouse Marigolds
Sep. 5th, 2023 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithBased on audience feedback, my tall orange-red landrace marigolds are now Shithouse Marigolds. So I decided to write up a description.
Location of source garden: Central Illinois. Formerly Zone 5b, currently Zone 6a. Still gets cold snaps to Zone 5b temperatures, but some 6a species are creeping in.
Name: Shithouse Marigolds
Species: Probably French marigold (Tagetes patula)
Status: Landrace. I've been growing marigolds here for decades; they always volunteered a few, and I saved seeds haphazardly. 2020 I started saving seeds more consistently from marigolds and a few other plants. Both the volunteers and the saved-replanted marigolds have kept pretty consistent traits over time, despite the wide variety of different marigolds I've bought as seeds or plants. These are well adapted to Midwest environs.
Known parents include: Marigold OG from The Buffalo Seed Company from 2023. Prior to that, lots of different marigold plants and seeds whose names I don't recall.
Height: Typically 12-18 inches, produces a range of plant sizes.
Flower Shape: Single to semi-double. Single flowers have one set of flat petals. Semi-double have more layers of petals and sometimes a taller tuft in the center. In this landrace, I have not seen the bigger ball or powder-puff shapes that fully double marigolds sometimes have.
Colors: Orange to red. Most range from schoolbus yellow to deep garnet-red. Some are solid, some mixed-color. Among the more common patterns are red with an orange center, orange with darker red streaks, and red petals outlined in orange or yellow.
Scent: Moderate to strong. I buy the smelliest marigolds I can find to discourage certain insect pests, but butterflies seem to love the strong-smelling ones.
Light requirements: Sun to part shade. Mine grow from fairly strong sun to significant shade.
Water requirements: Moderate. In the ground, they rarely need supplemental watering; in pots, they need more frequent watering during dry periods. One is actually surviving and blooming in a pot with no drainage that floods every time it rains, so possible raingarden potential there.
Reseeding potential: Moderate to high. They will volunteer not only in pots but also in the lawn.
Durability: Very high. Built like a brick shithouse! They sprout early in spring, take a while to get big enough to bloom, but when they do, they keep going right to a fairly hard frost. By fall, they're swarming with pollinators because not much else is left; good for a butterfly garden. They often last until October or early November. They seem to have few pests. They compete quite well against other plants, even grass in a lawn, making them good for mixed plantings with other reasonably assertive plants. They may crowd out smaller or shyer plants, though.
Location of source garden: Central Illinois. Formerly Zone 5b, currently Zone 6a. Still gets cold snaps to Zone 5b temperatures, but some 6a species are creeping in.
Name: Shithouse Marigolds
Species: Probably French marigold (Tagetes patula)
Status: Landrace. I've been growing marigolds here for decades; they always volunteered a few, and I saved seeds haphazardly. 2020 I started saving seeds more consistently from marigolds and a few other plants. Both the volunteers and the saved-replanted marigolds have kept pretty consistent traits over time, despite the wide variety of different marigolds I've bought as seeds or plants. These are well adapted to Midwest environs.
Known parents include: Marigold OG from The Buffalo Seed Company from 2023. Prior to that, lots of different marigold plants and seeds whose names I don't recall.
Height: Typically 12-18 inches, produces a range of plant sizes.
Flower Shape: Single to semi-double. Single flowers have one set of flat petals. Semi-double have more layers of petals and sometimes a taller tuft in the center. In this landrace, I have not seen the bigger ball or powder-puff shapes that fully double marigolds sometimes have.
Colors: Orange to red. Most range from schoolbus yellow to deep garnet-red. Some are solid, some mixed-color. Among the more common patterns are red with an orange center, orange with darker red streaks, and red petals outlined in orange or yellow.
Scent: Moderate to strong. I buy the smelliest marigolds I can find to discourage certain insect pests, but butterflies seem to love the strong-smelling ones.
Light requirements: Sun to part shade. Mine grow from fairly strong sun to significant shade.
Water requirements: Moderate. In the ground, they rarely need supplemental watering; in pots, they need more frequent watering during dry periods. One is actually surviving and blooming in a pot with no drainage that floods every time it rains, so possible raingarden potential there.
Reseeding potential: Moderate to high. They will volunteer not only in pots but also in the lawn.
Durability: Very high. Built like a brick shithouse! They sprout early in spring, take a while to get big enough to bloom, but when they do, they keep going right to a fairly hard frost. By fall, they're swarming with pollinators because not much else is left; good for a butterfly garden. They often last until October or early November. They seem to have few pests. They compete quite well against other plants, even grass in a lawn, making them good for mixed plantings with other reasonably assertive plants. They may crowd out smaller or shyer plants, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-05 12:20 pm (UTC)Could I ask for a few seeds of those? They sound like they'd do well in my jungle of a front garden.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-05 08:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-09-06 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-15 09:33 pm (UTC)*laugh*
Date: 2025-03-15 10:20 pm (UTC)