Last edited by shiny on November 03, 2026. View history
How to sow calendula: Direct seed outdoors after last frost. Thin seedlings to 40cm.
Sun requirement for calendula: Plant in Full Sun
Calendula, or Pot Marigold, is a yellow to orange flower grown for its medicinal uses and edible flowers. It is also a popular companion plant because of the beneficial insects it attracts. Although it is in the Daisy (Asteraceae) family with French Marigold, the two plants are in separate genera. French Marigold is usually not edible. Calendula is very easy to grow. It's flowers are often added to salads or used as food coloring and dye. The plant has antibacterial, antiseptic, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties. Its leaves and flowers are often made into salves and poultices for wounds and skin irritations. Calendula repels whitefly from tomatoes and can lure aphids away from beans. It attracts beneficial insects like ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies, which prey on aphids.
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
Calendula needs about 90 growing degree days.
For calendula, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 8°C and a shortest growing cycle of 120 days at its best temperature, about 1560 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your calendula will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Only plantings by members who have set their locations are shown.
by shawnacscott,
This weekend I had two full days to really focus on the yard, and I made the most of it. With the intermittent help of several others over the course of the weekend, I got both easement planter boxes filled with compost and soil, cleaned up and weeded the alley, got the stump pulled from the coni…
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calendulas
Nobody has harvested this crop yet.
Sign in or sign up to track your calendula harvests.If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 120 to 180 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Log in and set a location to get more accurate predictions for this crop. Log in.
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Calendula officinalis L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Asteridae Asterales Compositae |
|---|---|
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual, biennial |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, light |
| Optimal soil fertility | moderate |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | long day (>14 hours) |
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