What a delight - the calendula is one of our favourite to grow due to its ease. It will grow year round in warm climates and it's blooms provide a bit of joy for those winter months. Cut off the dying flower heads to prolong flowering and encourage more blooms.

Calendula takes a high strata in a veggie garden consortium, and will willingly fill empty space with it's stretching arms. When planted densely in ]amongst other plants in your veggie garden, calendula will want to shoot up for a bit of sun and send out its flowers high. Once it shoots an arm out, that arm can then flop around, and will find empty spaces in your garden to cover up the soil. Calendula is quite a hardy plant, so feel free to prune it back if it gets too unkempt.

Known for their soothing medicinal qualities, the flowers of the calendula are edible and can attract fun little insects. Sprinkle the petals on salads for a splash of colour or fry them up whole for something different for a brekkie treat. Steep 2-3 handfuls of flowers in olive oil for 4-6 weeks to extract their soothing qualities, you can then use the oil on nappy rashes, or dry/irritated skin.

If you leave the flowers on the plant they will eventually dry out and you will be left with the seedpods. Let them go dry and hard, then pull them off and sprinkle the seeds around the garden for even more calendula delight!

Our Variety - Kablouna Deep Orange

We love this variety, it gets a delightful orange flower which almost glows at dawn and dusk. It produces nicely sized flowers up to 8cm across, and self sows readily in the garden for future delight.

How long between plantings of Calendula should I wait to get continual harvests?

In short: 4 weeks

Once flowering, calendula will keep flowering well for a long time, especially if you pick off the flower heads once they die off. If you plant them with 4 weeks in between, calendulas will continually grace your garden.