Marigolds are a very popular plant that you will find populating many gardens during the season. Not only are they well loved for their beauty and softness, but they are also known to pose benefits to the rest of your garden. Marigolds are famous for their purported ability to help protect the surrounding plants in your garden from pests and parasites that would harm the root systems, but is there any truth to that claim? Do marigolds repel insects, really? Fortunately, marigolds live up to their reputation and can make a valuable addition to any garden that you want to shine with color and keep as healthy as possible.
Marigolds as Pest Control
Marigolds are a welcomed addition to any garden, but their ability to repel pests and bugs is definitely one of their selling points. It has been shown in a variety of studies that marigolds pose a repellent effect against nematodes, which are little worms that, in many cases, are destructive when they come into contact with a lot of plants.
Just like a number of other members of the daisy family, marigolds are also great at producing plenty of nectar to feed insects such as the syrphid flies, which are natural predators of aphids as well as other types of insects that harm plants in a garden.
Another way that marigolds can benefit a garden includes their ability to repel cabbage worms; not only from cabbage crops but also from other members of their family. Marigolds, particularly the strain named Stinking Roger, are able to keep flies and mosquitoes away, making marigolds as a mosquito repellent an easy choice for gardeners, too. These kinds of natural repellent features are able to repel the kinds of flies that pester animals and even livestock opposed to just the flies that like to eat the plants.
Marigolds as Weed Killer?
Because of their natural repellent and protective properties, you can never have too many marigolds. There have been studies that showed that some kinds of marigolds, like African marigolds, are able to even kill weeds like bindweed and ground ivy; however, in order to do this, the marigolds need to be planted not only early on in the season, but they need to be planted densely as well. Be sure that if you want to plant marigolds for pest control, you must do it the correct way to get the best effects. It is also worth mentioning that marigolds are only good at protecting other plants when they have been grown as a cover crop, which means they must be planted in a dense, thick manner and then allowed to grow for a number of weeks before they are needed to perform pest control.
To sum it up, marigolds definitely work as insect and worm repellents, but in order to do get these effects, they need to be grown liberally and allowed to grow for longer than other plants. With that considered, get out there and protect your beautiful garden with equally as beautiful marigolds!
