Calendula officinalis aka pot marigold a greet self seeder in my home garden

Calendula officinalis the plant that keeps on giving

Calendula or pot marigold is a very popular and common annual flower in many ornamental gardens throughout the world. In fact it is so commonplace that I found inconclusive results as to which region this plant originates. Some sources say Europe and others India. It can grow to about 80cm tall in extreme cases and can be used in mass plantings as a complete ground cover. Calendula has many medicinal, companion planting, culinary and even cosmetic uses which I will write about in another blog entry.

Self seeding 

I planted Calendula in one of my flower beds at home a couple of years ago and it is still going strong to this day. Being an annual plant Calendula's tactic for reproductions is to produce as many seeds as it can which fall to the ground after the flowers are done. The flowers are at their best in spring and summer however in Melbourne they can pretty much have some sort of flower on display all year round. The seeds have an interesting shape and remind me of little dried and curled up millipedes. The first year they sprouted in my garden from self sown seeds I originally thought they could be forget me not seedlings (forget me nots are a bit of a weed in my area depending on whether you like them  or not). Luckily I suspected they could be Calendula seedlings and let them develop into full plants.

Escape artist

Calendula is such a successful self seeder that it can escape if you let it. It is not fussy about soil conditions and I have seen it growing in my Macedon garden in between pavers where the soil would be quite poor. If you want it to self seed as I do then leaving a few plants to die off naturally will ensure they are perpetual garden residents. If you don't want them around any more it is important to dead head or pull out the plants once they develop seed heads (see below the picture below).

Calendula flowers in my Macedon garden during early summer.

A close up of a Calendula seed head loaded with seed. If you don't want any more pot marigolds then you need to make sure these little seed bombs don't hit the ground.

The pros and cons of self seeding plants

Self seeding plants

This summer I've noticed several self seeding plants popping up in the garden at home and at work.

Self seeding weeds

In some cases self seeding plants are seen as a nuisance. The definition of a weed is 'a plant out of place'. This means anything that self seeds that you think of as being a nuisance can be classified as a weed. The trick to managing self seeding weeds it to remove them before they grow seed thereby eliminating their method of reproduction (easier said than done). Examples of notorious self seeding weeds are dandelions, plantains, clover and many others.

Desirable self seeding plants

If a self seeding plant that has miraculously grown all by itself is desirable then there is nothing more magical than watching a plant you love materializing all own its own. One of the best things about a desirable self seeder (apart from the fact that you have had to do nothing to grow it) is that they are sometimes superior to plants you have sown yourself.

Examples of desirable self seeding plants

One example of this is an echinacea plant that sowed itself at my work garden. The funny thing is that we were trying to grow this particular form of echinacea but it only grew very small. We couldn't keep the poor little thing alive and forgot all about it. The next season a massive Echinacea plant sprouted up less than one metre away from the original one on the opposite side of a path that separates the two locations. The self sown plant is huge (almost twice the size of the original). Another example is a massive sunflower that self seeded also at work. It has to be the biggest sunflower that I've ever seen. The plant grew without any help whatsoever and the single flower head was huge (see the picture below). The other very popular example of self seeding is that of self seeding edible plants (parsley, chives, chard, lettuce and many others).

Annual flowers are by nature great self seeders. Annuals (lasting only one year) obviously need to be good self seeders to keep propagating themselves. Annuals I have at home that have done this include amaranthus, pansies, sunflowers and hollyhocks. Hopefully next year I can add poppies and calendula to that list.

This is the seed head from the self seeded sunflower. Unfortunately it was in bloom when I was on leave from work so I couldn't get a picture of it in its full glory. I'll save all those seeds and plant them at home next spring.

Amaranthus that grew itself in my home garden. Note all the annuals in the background that I've purposely left to run to seed. They should add to next years warm season annual display.

Below is the humble pansy. These little troopers keep reproducing themselves year after year. Heaps of them sprouted in my annual bed of my Macedon home last spring.