Calendula: The Flower You're Not Growing (But Should Be)

I used to be the kind of gardener that would say, if you can't eat it, why would you grow it? But my mind has been changed. So in this video, we're talking about Calendula, complete grow and use guide on a flower that you can use in the garden to get great pollinator benefits or just beauty. And also in the kitchen for some very interesting concoctions. So let's figure out how to grow it from start to finish. Calendula. I love to look at the history behind a plant and the name conventions behind that plant. So Calendula comes from the Roman word calens, which is like calendar or clock. And it refers to the fact that Calendula tends to bloom in the first day of the lunar month, but also the petals will close at sunset, rise when the sun rises. So you get this kind of sense of time with this incredible flower. These flowers have been used for hundreds of years in herbal and medicinal practices, specifically around accelerating healing and relating to the healing of burn wounds in particular. There are actually some studies, which we'll link below that do show some limited evidence for this. Although we'd probably like to see a little bit more of a broad study, but it certainly does seem to have some impact. And with that, let's talk about four different varieties for four different uses in the garden and the kitchen. First one I have is aptly named. It is called Resina. So if you're like an herbalist or a medicinal user, you might really like this one because as the name implies, it produces a ton of resin on the petals. So you can still grow it ornamentally or for these other purposes. But if you do want to harvest it for herbal use, then I would recommend Resina. Then you have Zeolites, which I think is probably the most striking one in my opinion. It's a lot different than the other ones I'm going to talk about. So if you're looking for like a pure ornamental banger of a calendula, I would go with Zeolites. Then if you just can't make up your mind, Pacific Beauty Blend, as the name implies, it's just a bunch of different ones all in the same packet. And if you're a balcony compact apartment style gardener, or you just love growing in containers, then Oopsy Daisy is the one to go with. It has this kind of like fire burst type of look. But no matter which one you choose, the way to start them is the same. I'm going to show you how to start the Resina variety because later on in the video, we're going to show you what to do with those petals. But take a look at the seed. I don't think I've ever seen a weirder seed than calendula. It actually just looks like I poured a bunch of weird little worms out into my hand. But I'll show you how to plant it. You can do it direct sow or you can do it indoors. If you do it indoors, maybe do it four to six weeks before your last frost. If you do it outside, maybe two, one or two weeks before your last frost, it can take a little bit of that winter sowing action where you throw it out before it's technically ready and then it'll just kind of sprout in place. But this is a plant with this seed being so weird that benefits from some darkness on the germination. So about a quarter to a half inch deep. So I'm doing a decent little press in here with my fingers. And then I don't plant just one because I want to plant this in like little clumps. So I'll do about four per hole. And then I'll move on to the next one because you're just going to get a nice little bunch of it. And then when you transplant that out, you'll just kind of leave it that way. You can thin it out if you want to, but I've noticed that calendula like growing in bit of clumps. And then the way you harvest it, it looks a little bit more bushy. You have nice flowers going on. And so that's really all you need to do. And then you'll cover this up, water it up and you're ready to transplant in maybe about two weeks. I'm out here in a beautiful section of not my garden, but Jacques on our team's garden. Cause he has this gorgeous patch of calendula that actually started on its own. Calendula will self-sow as it's called. So these flowers will produce seeds. They'll kind of drop and scatter everywhere. And you might just find yourself getting calendula that you didn't ask for. So when it comes to care, they're very tolerant of a lot of different conditions. The only thing you really want to keep in mind is full sun. If you can get it, they'll still produce in a little bit of shade, but full sun means more blooms. And then once they're established, they don't need a ton, ton, ton of water and they don't need a ton of nutrition. So you won't have to find yourself fertilizing this like crazy. Just kind of let it be once it's established. But it does not like a lot of clay, heavy waterlogged soil. If you can avoid that, you're in a good spot. So a couple of things to watch out for with calendula. One of them is pretty much unavoidable and that would be something called powdery mildew. You'll see it coming in on these leaves near the bottom. It's just like that sort of white fuzzy material, almost looks like white dust. That's a fungal disease, very hard to avoid with calendula. So one thing you can do is start a new batch every two or three weeks. So I have this patch here. I might start another batch over there. And then I don't have to worry about this one dying cause I've got this one going. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is if you take a look, these flowers are all in different stages of opening, right? This one is less open than this one. Of course, these ones are quite a bit more open. But if you take a look, you can see this one right here, it's seen better days. This is a spent calendula flower. And what you can do is deadhead. So come in like that and remove all the way down to where this stem will branch. So it'll kind of branch off like this. Anything from there up is only focused really on producing that seed head that we don't really want. So if you deadhead your calendula, you'll end up making the plant look a lot better, but also there'll just be more blooms cause you're going to be forcing it to stay in bloom. So that's calendula care. When it comes to harvesting, timing is super important. Come out in the morning, give it a nice cut, but make sure that the dew has dried off of the petals so they're not wet when you cut it. But also you want to make sure that the flower of course, needs to be open. You don't want to harvest these little unopened buds here, but you don't want to harvest one that is on its way out like this. You can see this just a little bit spent. These flower petals have wilted. You want to come out and harvest it when it's about half open. So this seems like a pretty good spot to me. So I might come out and just say I'm going to use it for medicinals. I'll just cut this right here and continue on my harvest and then figure out how to turn this into something cool in the kitchen. Nature often provides the best remedies and calendula is in my top three favorite botanicals to use. So today we're going to focus on the benefits of calendula for your hair and your skin. And it's super easy to make your own calendula infusions. Marrying the calendula with a carrier oil or oils is going to amplify the effectiveness of the flower. We're going to do a cold infusion with our dried calendula flowers. I only create my infused oils using thoroughly dried organics because I don't want to risk any mold growing in my oils. But once you've gathered your flowers, you're going to want to dry them for about four to six weeks. And once they are incredibly dry, you are ready to roll. So let's go ahead to the kitchen. The supplies that you're going to need to make your calendula oil infusion are your dried calendula flowers, a small glass jar with a tight fitting lid and your carrier oil or oils. My go-to carrier oils for skin and hair are jojoba and grapeseed. And that's because they are packed full of vitamin C, B and E. And grapeseed oil also has linoleic acid in it, which is said to stimulate hair growth. Here's a quick rundown of what carrier oils are best to use on your face based on your skin type. You're going to fill your jar three quarters of the way full with the dried calendula. I added in a little bit of chamomile that I had hanging around this infusion. Then you're going to fill your jar with your carrier oil all the way to the top. You're going to see some bubbles rise and you can poke those down with a chopstick or a Popsicle stick. And then make sure you top off the jar because you want as little to no air as possible to get to your organics. Then you're going to want to seal up your jar and you're going to keep it in a place out of direct sunlight away from heat for four to six weeks. And you want to give your bottle a little shake every couple of days. Every day would be ideal, but every couple of days will work. After four to six weeks, you'll see that the color has deepened. You'll notice some of the golden tones that have been taken out of the calendula and are now in the oil. And now we're going to go grab the cheesecloth and strain. All right. So you want to grab a another glass jar. I'm using one with a spout on it just makes it so much easier to pour out your funnel and your cheesecloth. And then you are going to grab your jar and you are going to pour out all of the contents in it. And then you're going to squeeze it as hard as possible to get every last bit of essence out of your oil. And it's a surprising amount of oil that you can get out of these infusions. Once you squeeze out every last drop of oil that you can get from your infusion, you can use your infused oil directly just the way that it is on your scalp and hair and also as a facial oil. So let's take a second and talk about why you would want to make your own lip balm in the first place. Well, the majority of commercially made balms have chemicals in them that actually cause more dryness and cracking the more you use it. So making your own allows you to control what's going in it. Plus you get all those healthy oils, fats, and vitamins. So here's my basic three ingredient lip balm recipe. You're going to use three parts of your calendula infused oil. One part beeswax. I do tend to put a couple of more pastilles in there just because I like a little bit more of a harder balm. One part solid butter, which just means that it stays solid at room temperature. I'm going to be using shea butter, but you can also use mango butter for this. And then I'm going to convert this all to tablespoons. You're going to use three tablespoons infused oil, one tablespoon beeswax plus a couple of extra pastilles. You're going to get your double boiler going. I always melt the beeswax down first because it takes the longest. Once it's melted, add in the shea butter and make sure you do not overheat the shea butter because if you do, it'll start to get grainy. So once the shea is about 90% melted, add in your infused oil. The temperature difference will re-solidify your concoction. So just whisk it around a bit to get everything remelted. And once that happens, pour it into whatever you've decided to keep your balm in. I actually tie up my balm holders with a rubber band so that keeps them steady when I'm going to be pouring them in. So once you've poured your liquid into your balm holders, you're going to want to let them cure for a few hours overnight. I pop them in the refrigerator, which speeds up the process and then they're ready to use. I hope you enjoy learning about how you can use all that beautiful calendula that you're growing or maybe starting to grow and you have fun making your lip balm. Until next time.