Growing and harvesting tagetes minuta

I have been growing tagetes minuta in my garden this year. Other names are Peruvian mint marigold, huacatay, black mint and stinking Roger. A same family as marigold. It’s grown like crazy and now it’s harvest time. I have yet to find great recipes for it yet though. I have not tried any Peruvian food even living in multi cultural London. However I have now manage to make fabric dye out of them and the result is brilliant!!

To be honest, I grew this plant out of curiosity as it’s something unusual and not available in supermarket. A bit like like my post on Finger lime

I bought the seeds online on ebay. To sow the seeds it’s not very difficult just the usual of planting out after the last frost is over. Sow in a propogator or on the radiator as long it’s somewhere nice and warm. I just cover the sowing pot with a claer plastic bag. Only one seedling grew to a plant as I was away from the garden for 6 weeks.

Over the summer and autumn season it just grew like crazy. It grew quite tall till one day it couldn’t support itself and bend over. I thought that’s it life over for this plant. Somehow it survived and still grew even I moved it to different position. It’s aromatic chemical is acts as a natural pesticide to deter everything from eelworms to whitefly. There was some unhealthy snapping noises but it survived?!! Now it’s beginning of November and it’s begin to flower!!

It’s not a plant that will survive to low winter temperatures so at some point. It will be harvest time soon. I am planning to dry them up where possible. Do some seed saving and hopefully there are not F1 seeds. To find out what are F! seeds it’s on my post on Tomato seed saving I have so far used the big old leaves into a dye pot. I will find some recipes for them to give it a try. I might just do a fusion food as there is a South American grocers nearby.