The Great Marigold Debate - Ep. 147

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:

This is positively farming media.

For as long as I can remember, I've believed that marigolds are the best companion plant for just about everything. Despite the naysayers touting time and time again that it was all conjecture, I stood by the research that I could find that proved otherwise. Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another episode of Just Grow Something. And if you listened to last week's focal Point Friday episode, you understand the position I now find myself in after all these years of companion planting marigolds in and amongst all of my garden plants. To my way of thinking, as long as there wasn't a proven detriment to the pairing, then even if the marigolds weren't preventing the pests in my garden, they would at least be attracting the beneficial insects that either would good pollinators or that would actually prey on the insects that I didn't want hanging around. And many marigolds have a strong scent, and I hoped this would also serve to confuse those pests that plague my crops. Now, do I still believe all these things? Yes. I will go to my grave defending marigolds as good companion plants because I have the science backed research to show those benefits. As always, I will link to boatloads of research in the show notes so you too can nerd out on some plant science. But have I had to take a step back and do a little more research about my beloved companion before I continue to make recommendations to people in their gardens? You betcha. Because science is always evolving and so are we as gardeners. And one of my favorite mantras is we don't know what we don't know, and sometimes we just got to admit when we're wrong.

Karin Velez [00:02:25]:

Okay? So before we get into the great marigolds debate, I have to tell you that we hit 50,000 downloads of this podcast over the weekend, and I cannot thank you all enough for being here every single week. I appreciate the fact that you are appreciating the information that I'm passing on and the stuff that I'm trying to teach and I just am like loving the fact that I get feedback from people and that you all are finding benefit in what it is that I'm trying to do here. And this is kind of a milestone and a lot of these downloads have come pretty much during this season. So we're in season three now and it seems like we're kind of picking up steam a little bit and more and more people are finding the show. And I just wanted to find a way to say thank you. So we are going to do a giveaway and I say we in the Royal We because it really is just me, but I want to give a little something back. So here's what you can do in order to get into this giveaway. You can do one of three things, or you can do all three things. The first thing would be to share your favorite episode or just a recent one on your social media, either your Instagram or your Facebook with a few words saying why you enjoy the podcast. This can be in your stories. It doesn't have to be in your main feed, but just be sure to tag me so that I can see it. Just mention what it is that you liked about that particular episode or what you like about the show in general. This will count as one entry. The second thing you can do is to leave a review on Apple podcast or Audible or any app that allows for reviews. Now, if you leave it anywhere other than Apple podcasts, be sure that you let me know, send me a message or email or something because I only get notifications from Apple. The other ones I basically just sort of stumble across and I really have to actively think about going out there to find them. So leave a review wherever you can do this and it will count as another entry. And yes, if you've left a review in the past, I will absolutely put you into the drawing. So consider yourself with one entry if you've already left a review. And for those of you who are not on social media or are not using an app that allows for reviews, well, I've got you covered too. Just reach out to me. Send me an email telling me what you like about the show, maybe what you think might be missing. Give me a suggestion for an episode, maybe share an interesting story about your garden or a way the show has helped, anything. I just want to hear from you, even if it's just like a quick, hi, hey, this is what's going on in my garden this week. Okay, do that. And that is entry possibility number three. So you have three ways to get an entry, and if you do all three, you get three entries. But what are you entering for? Well, and who can enter? Because I do have some limitations in this department, right? So first things first. This prize package includes a 16 ounce bottle of Elm Dirt's plant juice or Bloom juice. Your choice, whichever one you prefer. No, this is not sponsored by them. This is coming out of my pocket. I just want to share it with somebody. You will also get a Clyde's garden planner. Now, if you are an OG listener of this podcast, you know, from way back in, I think it was just the first year, the first season I used to do giveaways of the Clyde's Garden Planner for people who would send in their gardening questions, and I would do a drawing at the end of the month. It is a handy, easy to use sliding chart that shows the proper indoor and outdoor planting times for both the spring and the fall. So you slide the chart to match up your anticipated frost dates, either the last frost or the first frost. And it shows you when to plant to include seed, starting or transplanting and that sort of thing. It's very handy. It gives you a good generalized information, so you'll get that as well. And then you will also get a custom designed personalized travel cup with a straw that nobody has, not even me, because I haven't even designed it yet. But I will do that, and that'll be something that will also be included in this prize package. It is a prize package worth $50 US. So this is to celebrate 50,000 downloads. I thought that would be appropriate. Now, the caveat to this is that I can only send these items to locations in the US. Or Canada. So if you live outside either of these two countries, I would still love for you to play along. If I draw your name, I'll find a way to get you a credit to the merch shop so you can order something from there. Or I'll give you a credit for a future online course of mine. We will work something out, so feel free to play along. I would love to hear from all of you. Okay, so post to social media and tag me, leave me a review, and reach out to me to get entries into this contest. You have until May 31, 2023 to get in on this, and I will announce the winner on the June 6 episode. And speaking of reviews, I have another one from Audible. This five star rating comes from Edwina Rittenhouse, and she said thank you. I really enjoyed this episode. I am looking forward to listening more. Well, thank you, Edwina. I'm not sure which episode this was related to, but I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoy this one too. And you now have an entry into the 50K giveaway.

So this is going to be a fairly quick episode because we are in the middle of planting here. I spent hours outside today getting the first of the tomato plants in and that will continue for the rest of the week here. And then of course, then comes the peppers and the eggplant, and then we're onto sweet potatoes and all the while we're starting to harvest the spring veggies and we're still selling vegetable starts and our CSA delivery start next week. So, in other words, I am doggone tired, but I still wanted to deliver some value to you this week. So we're going to get straight to the point with marigolds and all the controversy surrounding them.

Many of the resources that are going to be cited at the end of this episode, that will be in the episode description in your podcast player or in the show notes over on my website have actually only been published in the last five years or so. And so that just goes to prove that we need to continually research the effects that plants and animals and insects all have on each other and how we can use them to benefit us in the garden. We don't know what we don't know. What we do know about marigolds is that they are in the Asterisier family, that's the Asters, and that most of them are in the genus Tagetes. And there are about 50 different species that fall under this genus. Now, there are also plants referred to as Pot marigolds and those are in the Calendula genus. And there are other flowers that are also referred to as marigolds. They're in different plant families. We're just going to focus on the Tagetes genus specifically. We usually see African, French and Aztec or Mexican marigolds as companion plants. And this is important to know as we start to look at the research. And since different regions call different plants by the same name or by similar names, let's be clear that we are generally talking about Tagetes erecta and Tagetes patula. These are the two main ones we usually refer to as African and French marigold that we generally are seeing studied for their companion planting properties. Now, if we do a quick search online, regardless of which search engine you use for our Marigolds good companion plants, I will tell you that all of the results are going to tell you a resounding. Yes, they are all going to talk about attracting pollinators and beneficial insects and how they repel harmful pests, with the exception of a few here and there who are a little bit more looking at the science. But most of these blog posts and these websites are going to say, yes, absolutely, hands down, they are good companion plants. If we look at the research, you'll see that this does hold up to a certain extent. But the problem with just blanketly saying, yes, they're good companions has made it seem like it's always a good companion to every plant in our garden. And that couldn't be further from the truth if you listened to last week's focal point friday, and if you haven't, I encourage you to do so. We talked about companion plants for zucchinis and other summer squashes, and I dropped the bomb that marigolds are attractive to certain pests, specifically squash bugs, squash vine bores, and cucumber beetles. And that was an absolute revelation for me because I have used marigolds in my summer squashes. Now, I should have gotten a little bit of a clue about this last year, and my husband and I were talking about it and he reminded me of some conversations that we had had with several customers. So we did not plant anything in the squash family here last year, no curcumits, because we were trying to alleviate some of the pressure that we usually get from squash vine bores and the squash bugs and the cucumber beetles. So we gave that crop a break. But what we did see was squash bugs specifically in our tomato plants. Now, this didn't seem that unusual to me because squash bugs overwinter as adults, and as soon as the temperatures begin to rise in the spring and it's warm enough for them to emerge, they will do so and they will come out and try to find their host plant. Well, it makes sense that if their host plant is not available, there were no squash, there were no cucumbers around, and there wasn't anything in that family. Well, they would find an alternate host. They would need to find someplace else to be able to land and lay their eggs. So it did not seem unusual that we were finding them in our tomato plants, because the tomatoes were planted in the place where the year before the squashes had previously been. So it made sense. But we weren't the only ones that were noticing this. My husband and I, both at our different markets, had comments from customers saying that they were finding tons and tons of squash bugs in their tomato plants. And again, I didn't see this as being unusual, but some of them were growing squashes and it didn't make much sense that the squash bugs would also be over in their tomato plants. But knowing what I know now, I know that I planted marigolds in with my tomatoes. We always do. We always plant marigolds and basil in with our tomato plants. They have always seemed to help with the growth. And yes, that is absolutely a correlation on my part. It is just from my experiences. I do know that there are some benefits in some of the research that I have seen that does say, yes, they are beneficial to tomatoes. But I'm going to bet that the reason that we were seeing so many squash bugs specifically in the tomatoes was because of those marigolds. And I would bet dollars to donuts that those customers that were complaining to me that they were also seeing a ton of squash bugs in their tomatoes had probably also planted Mary Golds as companion plants. Now, were the squash bugs doing much damage to those tomato plants? No, they were just more of an annoyance than anything else. A little bit of damage here and there, but it wasn't nearly the damage that you would normally see from an infestation like you would in your squashes. I just find it very interesting that I never kind of made the connection before that it might have been the marigolds. And why would I ask any gardening group? Go to a master gardeners meeting, talk to a nursery owner, whatever, and ask about marigolds, and you will get a completely different set of answers from every single person. This is especially true if it's like an online gardening group that features gardeners from all over the place. Everybody's experience is different, and that's because it's based on what they're trying to protect. So what crop it is that they're growing and what they're trying to protect it from. So if we're going to use marigolds in the garden as a beneficial plant, we need to know what it is that we are trying to accomplish. And in order to do that, we have to know what pests the marigolds are good at repelling and which ones they are attracted to, because this will tell us exactly how we should be using those plants. So things that marigolds are good at repelling, these include aphids, whiteflies melonworms and pickle worms, coddling moth. This is something that is important to apples and other palm fruits, root, not nematodes. This is typically why we see these as a benefit in tomatoes, diamondback moth and cabbage stem. Flea beetle. That is a very specific flea beetle, and it has a very specific repelling property for them. Now, unfortunately, the list of things that marigolds are attractive to is actually longer than the list of things that they are good at repelling. So what's attracted to our marigolds? Squash bugs, squash vine bores, cucumber beetles, leaf hoppers, spider mites, tarnished plant bug, beet, army worm, cabbage looper, tobacco budworm, flea beetles other than the cabbage stem. So striped flea beetles, western black, those types of flea beetles, and thrips. These are all attracted to the marigolds. Now, there are beneficials, too, that are attracted to the Marigolds, like lady beetles, hoverflies, parasitoids, and predatory insects. So this is, I think, where the confusion has come in and where the arguments ensue about whether or not marigolds are good for the garden or not. Because, yes, they do attract beneficials, they attract pollinators, they attract the ladybugs and the hoverflies and those things that will predate on some of the bugs that we do not want in our garden. But the list of things that it attracts, that we don't want there, is way longer than the specific beneficials that we could see. So what does this mean for my precious Marigolds? What it comes down to is the use is going to be dependent on what we're planting and what we're trying to protect that crop from. I'm going to tend to lean probably more towards a trap crop in most instances. So if you have pests that are on that list of things that are attracted to the marigolds, then you are going to want to place the marigolds in a way in a place that is further away from the crop that you are trying to protect. You want to draw the pests away and get it over to where the marigolds are, so you want them far enough away to where they're going to focus on the marigolds and try to stay away from your crop you're trying to protect. In many instances, you may see that your marigolds become overrun with the pest. If you have a very bad infestation, in which case you may end up having to remove that entire crop, some people will choose to use pesticides of some sort to take care of the infestation. Other times, this is not necessary because it is so much more attractive to these pests than your other crop is that they generally don't have to worry about it. But you're going to have to play around with this in your own garden. Now, if you're trying to repel certain things and you don't have to worry so much about those other pests that the marigolds attract, then yes, you can intercrop them in and amongst your garden plants and not have to worry about it. You just again need to know, is it the aphids? Okay, you're trying to keep the aphids away, then yes, by all means, go ahead and interplant them. But if spider mites are also a problem, well, then maybe you ought to forego intercropping and just move them away from your crop. And that way you're not repelling the ones that you want to keep away, but then also attracting some that could do more damage. So either use it as an intercropped plant, as a deterrent in certain instances, or as a trap crop in others. So my take on all this is, yes, I'm still going to use Mary Gold. I don't know if it's just me being stubborn or if it's just that I do believe in the different benefits that they can provide, but I will likely be changing the way that I do things. Rather than having to keep a running list of which things it's going to attract and which things it's going to repel, I will likely just be using it as a border plant around my crops. So specifically, let's look at my tomatoes. I usually intercrop several marigolds for every few feet of tomato row. Instead of doing that, I will probably continue to intercrop like my basil in between my tomato plants and then move the marigolds to the outer edges. That way it's going to attract the good bugs, it's going to repel the bad bugs, it's going to pull the others away from my food crop, and then I'll be Able To Destroy Those Insects and The Marigolds Themselves If Needed. And this is specifically going to be in my squash fields this year, so I hope this helped. I was a little bit flabbergasted by what I had found. And again, it just goes to show that we don't know what we don't know. And we should always, always be willing to learn in the garden and be willing to make changes based on new information. So until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.