White Marigold Reviews

 One of my annual basics is Marigolds.  They are inexpensive, easy to grow, and adaptable.  Pollinators like them.  Rabbits and Deer don't care too much for them.  Their only natural enemy that I can see is slugs.  But that is easily solved by slug bait, and it is sometimes useful to know where the slugs are as long as you have a spare Marigold or two to replace the ones they skeletonize.  I don't mind replacing a few Marigolds if it means I can bait and defeat the slugs before the Dahlias emerge.

I have always scattered them around the vegetable garden for color but a few years ago I started using them to construct decorative hedges here and there.  For these I preferred the Vanilla F1 variety.  They were the right height with a tight and tidy form.  And they really were nearly white.  They are quite a bright spot in the landscape, and easily seen from any distance.

Vanilla

The past couple of years, Harris Seeds has not produced and marketed them and, unfortunately, there is nothing quite as good on the market.  First I tried saving seeds from the last of the plants from the seeds I had left, but because they are an F1 Hybrid the results were varied and none of them close to what I wanted.  I've tried Snowball (not bad but fewer flowers) and White Swan (too tall).  This year I tried three more varieties, and they are beginning to show their true colors.

Vanilla Cream

The best one is Vanilla Cream.  It is compact and full of blooms.  But as you can see it is not as white.  The photo above and the one below were taken within minutes with the same camera settings, but nearly imperceptible changes in light enhance the yellowness so that one minute you are happy with the shade and the next you realize they may be yellow afterall.  From a distance they still read as white.  More of a French Vanilla Ice Cream white.

Moonlight (below) is quite plainly yellow and did not have very good germination, survival or growth rates.  They are not bushing out even as well as a standard yellow variety.

Moonlight

Creamy White was showing promise.  It is a vigorous plant, a little late to bloom, and very fluffy and rangy.  That wouldn't be a big deal except when the blooms finally began to open up...

Creamy White

...they were sort of a cross between anemone style blooms and single flowers and not even remotely like pompons.  But they are quite white.   The plants were way too tall for what I wanted along the shorter Dahlias even though I had already pinched back the main leader about eight inches weeks ago.  Once I saw what the blooms would be like I went ahead and pruned them back hard for size control.

I am now waiting for the Creamy Whites to get over sulking and put forth even a single bloom.  Obviously they are not a strong performer, because even the four plants along the side of the bed that I only pinched and did not prune hard have failed to bloom at this late date,  The Vanilla Cream are good enough that I went and purchased enough seeds for next year when they went on sale.  I may also go back and experiment again with Snowball but next year is the Semiquincentennial and I am planning a Red White and Blue theme in my annuals and I will need some reliable white Marigolds for that.