Calendula as weed suppressant and green manure, what do you think?

[Pineberry]

I am thinking of sowing calendula seeds all over the bare soil on my plot, hoping it will act as great weed suppressant. It can grow all year round, easy to pull out when needed, self seeding and pretty flowers for bees. Plus I got got lots of seeds for free now.

Do you think it could work for this purpose, or am I missing something since I do not see it being sold as such?

[Thelma Sanders]

The foliage does die back considerably, sometimes all together depending on the weather, during winter, so it won't work that well as a weed suppresent during winter and the early spring months

[zazen999]

I pull all mine and leave as a mulch; last year all my calendulas were pulled and chopped up under the fruit trees, which kept the weeds down all winter and gave me hundreds if not thousands of plants come the spring, which I then transplanted to the lottie and they in turn will self seed there forever now.

[kathyd]

I suspect you can use almost anything as a green manure really... and calendulas are lovely aren't they . I had lots of self seeded ones this year, along with hundreds of trailing nasturtians, and I allowed them all to grow amongst my crops as a green manure until they started to take over and shade out the crops, at which time I pulled up most of them and just left a few around the edges for the bees. I left them on the surface like Zaz did, to let them rot down in situ. The nasturtians scrambled amongst my brassicas for ages before I had to move them, and strangely although I found quite a lot of slugs hiding in them, there wasn't much damage to the brassicas until the nasturtians disappeared! Coincidence? No idea. But either way, they did help keep other weeds down and looked lovely for a long time before moving on to become fodder for worms . So go for it! But they won't grow over the winter, as Thelma says - you're basically sowing the seeds for next year.

[Pineberry]

Thank you, I hope calendula come spring time will grow quickly and outcompete the rest of weeds.
Mind you winter the year before I had calendula in the border which did not totally died down. That's why I get an impression that it will stay throughout the year. I will give a go, I like its flowers.

[Two_Sheds]

it won't work that well as a weed suppresent during winter and the early spring months

But there aren't that many weeds that grow over winter anyway

I suspect you can use almost anything as a green manure really

Yep, even weeds.


I now have a continuous mulch on my soil, that is all the weeds & green manures that I've chopped up and left on the soil surface. I get very few weeds now and those that do appear are easy to spot and pull up