2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
If you are not a supporter of chemical warfare against uninvited eaters of your crop, make friends with marigolds. Their smart velvet hats will brighten the territory; will attract hoverflies and other beneficial insects; will scare away the indestructible bear and nematodes, deeply buried in fertilized soil
Guests from America
If Columbus had not discovered the lands surprisingly rich in edible plants, today we would eat turnips, and spelled (a wheat variety), which Balda loved, who worked for the priest.
Overseas territories have presented Europe and Russia with potatoes - the main dish of many generations. However, later, having decided to reduce its bounties, America added the Colorado potato beetle to the gift.
Marigolds are another American gift. They grow freely almost throughout the two overseas continents. The Indians attributed magical power to the marigolds. Today, flowers are firmly established in flower beds, near-stem circles of fruit trees and garden beds in Europe and Russia.
Sowing time
* February. If you can provide the seeds with an air temperature of 20-23 degrees and good lighting in February, then in May the marigolds will decorate your garden and scare off waking pests.
* March, April. Sown during this period and planted in open ground, when the danger of frost has passed, marigolds will protect the beds from June until the first frost.
* May June. Sowing in open ground. Bloom by the end of summer.
* Autumn. If you want to extend your friendship with marigolds, you can sow them in the fall. Then, in the spring, your windowsills will bloom with velvet flowers, protecting other plants from gluttonous aphids.
Easy attitude to transplants
Marigolds easily tolerate a transplant at any age. This quality can be used to maintain flower beds in bloom throughout the summer cottage, filling bald spots with them after early blooming plants have outlived their life.
Varieties of marigolds
Marigolds will satisfy every taste and decorate any flower garden, since there are varieties with different bush heights, different color shades and flower shapes.
Someone loves double flowers, someone simple. Among the marigolds there are carnation and chrysanthemum-like ones (it is not for nothing that they are from the same Astrov family).
Abundant and long flowering of marigolds does not depend on the variety.
Growing conditions
With relative unpretentiousness, marigolds love warmth, areas open to the sun (they stretch out strongly in the shade), and do not tolerate frost.
Soils are slightly acidic or neutral, loose, do not like stagnant water, but need watering. Three times a season, fertilizing with mineral fertilizers will not hurt.
Seedlings should be placed at a distance of at least 40 centimeters from each other, since the plant is bushy.
At the beginning of growth, weeds are required to be removed, later there will simply not be room for weeds.
Leaving a few flowers for seeds for the next year, the rest of the faded ones should be removed in a compost heap.
Protectors of vegetables, fruits and flower beds
The worn-out flowers can be dried and poured over the ground during the autumn digging of the soil, adding chopped bushes. This is a good prophylaxis to protect the soil from the bear, nematodes (harmful worms), the Colorado potato beetle.
Blooming marigolds will scare away butterflies from cabbage; Colorado potato beetle from potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants; weevils from strawberries; aphids from rose bushes, fruit trees and other plants damaged by them.
The roots of marigolds are a weapon against nematodes and soil fungi that cause rotting of the bulbs of vegetables and flowers.
Having received their Latin name (Tagetes) from the grandson of the god Jupiter, the marigolds adopted from him the gift of predicting the future. It is not difficult to guess that they predict a beautiful and vibrant life for your gardening economy without especially malicious violators of its well-being and productivity, if you find a place for them in the countryside.
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