Marigolds (and Mint)

If I remember correctly, I first planted marigolds back when I was a kindergarten student and our teacher had us each plant a marigold flower in a paper cup to present to our mothers for Mother's Day. A few years later my Father dug up a small flower plot in front of our family playhouse for me to plant and tend.  Of course among the flowers I planted were marigolds.   Marigolds are easy flowers to grow from seed.  They germinate quickly and are quite tolerant of varied growing conditions.   They come in a wide variety of colors and sizes and shapes, and are usually quite easy to find in the local nurseries.  Marigolds are also said to repel some insects and pests, so have traditionally been planted among the vegetables.  I'm not absolutely certain how much they help to keep the pests away, but I love the look of flowers surrounding my vegetable patches, so I almost always try to plant a flat or two of marigolds in the garden.

This past February DD4 was home for a long weekend, and expressed a desire to grow something.  We puttered around the local dollar store and found a cut galvanized aluminum planter and some seed packets at a very reasonable dollar store price.  She took them back to school with her, and recently shared a photo of her early spring planting efforts:

Source

It was several weeks later before I planted my own seeds in a variety of secondhand peat pots and plastic six packs leftover from previous years, so my own marigolds aren't very large yet.  Hopefully they won't get too leggy in my low sunlight house before it warms up enough to transplant them outside in May.  There's still too much danger of frost in these parts for planting the marigolds just yet, but we know the warmer sunny days are coming!

DD4 also decided to plant some mint several years ago.  The mint has flourished in her plot, and we now have an abundance each summer for garnishing, nibbling on fresh from the garden, or brewing up a cup of mint tea.  The old foliage still needs to be trimmed back, but the new green shoots are pushing up through the dead and dry stems, anxious to meet the spring.

Do you have marigolds or mint in your gardens?