"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
et...
"Boris Nogoodnik" wrote in message
et...
Year after year I am having probem with Marigolds. It's
well
prepared flowerbed with compost and perlight and everything
else
glows fine, but the Marigolds. They just dying couple of
weeks
after I plant them. It's in partial shade. Location is New
Jersey. Do they need something specific? And are there any
known conditions that they cannot tolerate, while other
plants
can?


That's strange. Here in upstate NY (Rochester), when all the
other plants
are suffering from drought or floods or high winds, my
marigolds are the
ruffians who laugh it all off.

1) Whenever I've read about marigold culture, sources say the
plants need
nothing special, and in fact may do better with less feeding.
I grow them in
the nastiest soil on my property, and they're robust, year
after year.
Primarily, I grow the "climax" series from Burpee, which are
the big
marigold plants, not the little French/dwarf varieties. There
have been
other odd marigold problems in this newsgroup recently, and I
wonder if the
out-of-control breeders have managed to lose some of the
marigold family's
bulletproof characteristics.

2) The meaning of "partial shade" varies from one yard to the
next, so it's
hard to know the real situation. Some of my marigolds grow on
the West side
of the house, and see no sun until mid-afternoon, at which
point they are
roasted until sundown. They seem identical in quality to the
ones which get
sun all day. If your version of "partial shade" means dappled
sunlight most
of the time and full sun hardly ever, you should see lesser
results, but
certainly not plant death.

3) You say you've had the same problem year after year. Are
you growing the
same (named) variety each year? Or, same general category? If
so, you might
want to try a more robust variety. If you bought these as
plants, I'd
contact the nursery and ask if they've had complaints about
the variety.

-Doug



Interesting thing is that some types (I don't remember the
names) grow well, some don't. The ones that grow well, have big
round yellow flowers. Other types with smaller reddish flowers
don't survive. I'll take some pix tomorrow, put them on the web
and post a link here. May be someone will be able to figure out
something from the pictures.