How to Grow, Harvest, Dry and Use Calendula Flowers (With Photos)
Come learn all about calendula: my favorite edible and medicinal herb! This guide will explore how to grow calendula, along with how to harvest and dry calendula flowers to use for natural skin care, infused oil, salves and more. In addition to providing a burst of sunshine in the garden, you may be surprised to learn what amazing therapeutic properties it offers!
We’ve been growing calendula for over 10 years so this guide is full of pro tips, recipes, photos, and our favorite varieties to grow. We even have a designated “calendula farm” garden area now, where we grow flowers exclusively for our organic skincare line.
NOTE: This post was originally published in June 2019 but has been significantly updated since.
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About Calendula
Calendula officinalis is a cheerful, daisy-like flowering herb that is highly prized by gardeners and herbalist alike. It’s gorgeous, easy to grow, has a long blooming season, attracts pollinators to the garden (bees love it!), and is easy to save seeds from. It’s one of my favorite easy annual flowers to grow, hands-down.
Calendula is highly medicinal and edible, with many wonderful uses beyond the garden – including in the kitchen, natural medicine, and skin care products. Calendula is especially renown for its ability to soothe skin issues.
Note that calendula is sometimes referred to as “pot marigold” but don’t confuse it with true marigolds, such as french marigolds. They’re distinctly different, and not nearly as medicinal in nature.
Benefits of Calendula
If you read labels, you’ll probably notice calendula as a key ingredient in many natural skin care products, and for a good reason! When used topically, studies consistently show that calendula can ease, heal, or otherwise treat a huge array of skin conditions including rashes, swelling, eczema, burns, sunburn, acne, stings, wounds, scrapes, scars, and more.
Calendula works its magic by promoting cellular repair and growth, coupled with its natural antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. It’s most commonly applied to skin as calendula-infused oil, a healing salve, or lotion.
Above all, calendula is gentle in its work. According to expert herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, “calendula is a wonderful herb for babies – popular for treating cradle cap, diaper rash, thrush, and other skin irritations.”
When used internally (via tea or tincture) it can help boost the immune and lymphatic systems, fight fungal infections, reduce inflammation, menstrual cramps, and gastrointestinal upset, as well as keep fevers at bay. It’s also an anti-viral.
Our Favorite Calendula Varieties
Calendula comes in dozens of shades of the sunset: golden yellow, bright to light oranges, blushing reds, and some of my favorite, peachy-pink tones. Some plants grow quite tall (over 3 feet) while other varieties stay more compact and bushy. They all offer amazing healing properties, yet the more sticky and resinous the flowers are, the more potent your homemade calendula products will be.
Some of our personal favorite calendula varieties to grow include: Resina, Pacific Beauty, Strawberry Blonde, Pink Surprise, Oopsy Daisy and Zeolights.
How to Grow Calendula
Calendula is just about as no-fuss and low-maintenance as they come! It’s easy to grow calendula from seed, or you may be able to find seedlings at your local nursery in spring. It grows well in just about every zone, including in containers.
- Direct sow calendula seeds outdoors after the last spring frost in your zone, or start seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. See tips on starting seeds indoors in the section to follow.
- Plant calendula seedlings outside once the risk of frost has passed, spacing plants about 8 to 12 inches apart in the garden.
- Calendula is not picky about soil. It performs best in moderately rich, well-draining soil but is known to tolerate poor soil conditions too. Some of our volunteer calendula plants grow happily in gravel even!
- Calendula grows best in full sun, though partial or afternoon shade can be beneficial in places with exceptionally hot summer weather.
- Provide moderate water. Calendula is fairly drought-tolerant so it won’t appreciate overly wet conditions.
- Once established, calendula is tolerant to both heat and cold. In places with mild winters, you can grow it year-round! Expect prolific blooms from calendula in spring through fall.
- Calendula readily self-seeds (especially if you don’t harvest the flowers) so new plants will grow back as “volunteers” year after year.
Starting Calendula Seeds Indoors
We prefer to start our calendula indoors to get a jump start on the growing season, which means harvesting blooms sooner too!
- To start indoors, sow calendula seeds in containers of fluffy seed-starting mix about 6 to 8 weeks before the last spring frost date in your zone. Plant seeds approximately 1/4-inch deep.
- Use a seedling heat mat to help encourage quick germination, and provide ample bright light (e.g. a grow light) to prevent them from getting leggy.
- Keep the soil evenly damp but not soggy.
- Transplant calendula seedlings outside once the risk of frost has passed, but be sure to harden off indoor seedlings first to prevent transplant shock!
Pro Tip: I always thin my seedlings to one plant per cell or seedling pot within just a week or two of sprouting. (I simply trim out the extras at the soil line.) Early thinning reduces competition and makes seedlings grow SO much faster! See our complete guide on starting seeds indoors for more detailed tips.
Calendula Pests and Disease Control
Thankfully, calendula doesn’t attract many pests. I’ve heard it’s deer resistant too!
Thrips, aphids and whiteflies may occasionally bother calendula plants, which can be blasted off with water or treated with homemade insecticidal soap. We occasionally see tiny bugs on our flowers but don’t treat them since they’re used for organic skincare products. Instead, the bugs seems to simply disappear once we harvest and dehydrate the flowers.
The most common disease that effects calendula is powdery mildew, which unfortunately is very prevalent here. Avoid overcrowding plants to increase airflow and reduce the chances of disease. Thankfully, the mildew seems to mostly affect the foliage and not the blooms. Learn how to prevent and treat powdery mildew organically here.
How to Harvest Calendula
- To harvest calendula, simply pluck or cut off the whole flower head where it meets the stem. Don’t pick petals only. Contrary to popular belief, the most medicinal part is the sticky green base of the flower head, NOT the petals alone.
- For the most healing benefits, harvest calendula flowers when they’re young, fresh and have just fully opened. If your schedule allows, it’s best to harvest calendula mid-morning, shortly after the new blooms have opened but after any dew has dried. Wet flowers can mold in storage!
- My fingers get super sticky when I’m picking calendula… but that’s a good thing! Again, the sticky resin is where most of the healing power comes from.
- Older, fading calendula flowers (including those forming seed) aren’t as medicinal in nature. You can either leave those on the plant to fully mature and dry out for seed-saving OR snip them off to discard before the seeds mature – which will reduce self-seeding and keep your plants looking tidy. Routine dead-heading will also promote more new blooms!
- After harvest, it’s key to start drying the flowers right away to prevent mold. See drying instructions below.
Pro Tip: Don’t be shy about harvesting calendula flowers! The more you harvest, the more will grow. So if you’re serious about stocking up on calendula, plan to harvest new blooms every few days.
How to Dry Calendula
It’s essential to fully dry calendula flowers before putting them away for storage. Otherwise, the thick sticky flowers are prone to growing mold. (I’ve heard so many horror stories about jars full of moldy blooms – SO sad!) Plus, it’s important to use 100% dry flowers to make calendula oil or salves, which can also grow mold if they aren’t properly dried first.
You can dry calendula in a food dehydrator or attempt to air dry the flowers (both explained below). However, I don’t recommend drying calendula flowers in the oven. Exposure to high heat can denature and ruin its therapeutic compounds.
Don’t wash calendula flowers before drying. Extra moisture isn’t welcome! If needed, gently shake them out to dislodge dust or occasional insects. In my experience, the flowers are pretty clean since we harvest newly-opened blooms.
We dry our calendula flowers whole. You can also dry just the petals, which will dry more quickly and have less chance of mold. However, plucking petals is tedious and you lose the most medicinal part (the base of the flower).
How to Air Dry Calendula
It’s possible to passively air dry calendula flowers under the right conditions. It takes a bit of time and patience (up to a week or longer), but be forewarned they could develop mold if they don’t dry quickly enough.
- Spread out the calendula flowers on screens, in airy baskets, or other breathable racks like this mesh hanging herb drying rack.
- Then place them in a warm, well-ventilated, arid location to dry.
- Periodically toss and turn the blooms to ensure they’re drying evenly.
- You can also set up a fan nearby to encourage good airflow.
I personally don’t mess with air drying – especially in our cool, mild climate. It simply takes too long and I don’t want to risk them molding. Plus, we want to ensure the flowers are 1000% dry before making infused oil and salves (so they don’t spoil) so we use our food dehydrator.
Drying Calendula in a Food Dehydrator
Drying calendula flowers in a food dehydrator is the most quick, effective, and foolproof method.
- Spread the flowers out in a single layer (not piled up or overlapping) on your dehydrator trays.
- Dehydrate them on a low heat setting – ideally around 95-100°F – until they’re fully dry. Remember, high heat can ruin some of their beneficial properties! Our favorite Excalibur dehydrator has a “living foods” setting we like to use for calendula and other sensitive herbs.
- The time it takes to fully dry varies depending on your dehydrator and the thickness of the flowers. For example, some of our smallest blooms dry well within one day while very large flower heads take longer. We usually dry our calendula for at least 48 hours (or longer) before putting it away for storage, just to be safe.
How to Store Calendula
Once they’re fully dry, store dried calendula flowers in an airtight container (e.g. large glass jars) in a cool, dark location. Dried calendula will be the most potent if used within one year, though it’s still okay to use for several years – as long as the flowers are still in good dry condition (not moldy).
How to Use Calendula for Skin Care
Come experience the magic of calendula for skin health for yourself! When applied topically, it can soothe skin irritation better than prescription creams.
- You can make homemade calendula oil, which is made by steeping and slowly infusing the dried flowers in a carrier oil of choice (such as olive oil, jojoba oil, or sweet almond oil). After several weeks, strain away the flowers and you’re left with a potent, therapeutic oil that can be applied directly to skin or used in other DIY skin care products.
- Use calendula oil as an ingredient to make homemade calendula salve, calendula soap, lotion, hand cream, body butter, lip balm and more. See related recipes below.
- Oil aside, you can add calendula petals (or dried flowers) to homemade bath salts, soap, body scrubs or right into a bubble bath.
RELATED: Don’t miss our easy step-by-step guides on how to make calendula oil and homemade calendula salve, or our whipped body butter recipe! We also offer premium organic calendula salve, face oil, and hand and body lotion in our shop – made by hand with love on our homestead.
Other Ways to Use Calendula
- Sprinkle fresh or dried calendula petals as a garnish on top of salads (or any dish really) for a playful pop of color! I like to add the petals to salads, spring rolls, quiche, ice tea, mocktails, flower-infused ice cubes, or to dress up the top of dips like guacamole or summer salsa.
- Make calendula tea! Calendula tea tastes mild and earthy, and offers great anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antibacterial properties. According to the Chestnut School of Herbs, calendula tea is especially popular to ease heartburn, digestive issues, menstrual cramps and swollen lymph glands. Steep about 1 to 2 loose tablespoons of dried petals, or 4 to 6 whole dried flowers per 8 ounces of water. Cover and steep in hot water for 8 to 10 minutes, and then enjoy!
- If you have chickens, calendula petals can be added to their nesting boxes as a natural insect repellent. Also, if you feed your chickens fresh or dried calendula petals, their egg yolks will be even more golden orange! Plus, they’ll reap all the health benefits by consuming it as well.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, mature calendula plants are frost tolerant once established (but not hardy against a full hard freeze). They may exhibit some slight damage or wilting after exposure to frost but will bounce back and continue to grow.
Calendula is most often grown as an annual flower in most zones, though it can survive as a short-lived perennial in warmer climates too (zone 9-11).
Calendula doesn’t usually need to be pruned, though routine harvesting (or dead-heading) of the flowers will help promote more new blooms. If parts of the plant get sparse and unhealthy looking, you can cut the plant back by about 1/3 to encourage fresh new growth.
Calendula is generally considered very gentle and safe to use, especially when used topically. However, calendula is a member of the daisy family so it could trigger allergies for those sensitive to the Asteraceae family – such as ragweed, marigolds, daisies, goldenrod and dandelion.
And that concludes this lesson on growing and using calendula!
I hope you found this article to be interesting and helpful as you start your calendula journey. Even if you don’t plan to make salves and oil, you won’t regret adding it to your garden! Feel free to ask questions in the comments.
If you want to dive deeper, I highly recommend checking out the book “Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide” by Rosemary Gladstar. It has been one of my key sources of information and inspiration thus far – for calendula, and beyond! Another great resource is this Organic Body Care Recipes book.
Don’t miss these related posts:
- Growing Herbs 101: How to Start a Kitchen Herb Garden, Indoors or Out
- How to Dry Fresh Herbs: 4 Easy Ways + Storage Tips
- Pressing Flowers for Beginners: How to Press Flowers 4 Ways (Pros and Cons)
- 7 Best Easy Annual Flowers to Grow In Any Zone (With Photos)
126 Comments
Heather
I don’t have a lot of room for drying. Can I leave the flowers on the stems and hang dry them? Then remove the stems before storing.
I love your blog and your garden is so lovely.🥰🥰 Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Have a great day😁😁
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Heather, it is so great to hear you enjoy our site! Yes, you can absolutely hang dry the stems before storing the flowers once they are fully dried. We go over four ways to dry herbs in this article if you’d like to see a little more in depth on the best practices for hang drying. Just be sure your flowers are fully dried before sealing them in an airtight container or using the flowers to infuse oil as you don’t want anything to mold or spoil. Hope that helps and good luck!
Abigail Russell
Currious. Could I cut the flowers lower on the stem and use them as cut flowers in a vace for a day or two before cutting the heads off and drying them? Or would this decrease the amount of medical value in the flowers? If so how much does it decrease it? And if not how long could I keep them in the vace before drying before losing too much of the medicinal aspects of the flowers?
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Abigail, you should be able to harvest a bouquet of calendula to display in a vase before you finally end up drying them fully. We can’t say how much medicinal value will be lost in the flowers themselves but I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If you have enough of a harvest of blooms, keep some to enjoy in a vase while you start drying the rest. Hope that helps and good luck!
Carol
Thank you for this article!
How long can you store calendula in a glass jar? I have some that I harvested about 5 years ago but I am not sure if it is still potent enough to make a salve with.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Carol, I would try to use dried calendula flowers within a year for maximum medicinal benefit, after five years, most of the beneficial properties are likely gone from the flowers. However, the flowers or the resulting salve won’t be bad, it may just not offer as many benefits from the calendula flowers themselves, the oil and shea butter will still help provide a nourishing product for your skin. Yet, if you plan to grow more calendula this year, you may just want to start out fresh, hope that helps and good luck!
Frank Trinke (Elf Chef)
In the process of creating a 1/4 acre Permaculture Food and Herbal Medicine garden to demo and teach in South Florida. Long process, and won’t go full tilt until my wife retires from the Air Force in August and permanently moves to our permanent home here and can help me, along with our 16 year-old son) .
Calendula is also one of MY favorites and has been among the very first plants I have started as I build out this project.
Many Resina and Pacific Beauty Mix already sprouted using Soil Blocks and now in their assigned beds and growing nicely. I’ve started another batch of soil plugs with calendula to give to my new neighbors to encourage them to start their own Victory Gardens…big or small…much like the ethos that the government encouraged during WWII.
I now have many varieties of Basil, plus Borage, Sage, Rosemary, Dill, Jasmine and many others already added as well.
Experimenting to see what cultivar of Lavender will grow well in this humid, 10a Zone.
Mexican Sunflower, Chaya, and Comfrey already in the ground, and growing well in our sandy soil to provide natural fertilizer as chop and drop, tea and soil enhancement for all the other things that I’ve planned! I have also contracted a local steel fabricator to build a medium-sized KonTiki-style biochar kiln to make biochar for my own use and to sell locally.
Your raised bed garden layout has been the inspiration for my design as well. Thank you!
Always look forward to your website updates and vids. (Coincidentally, I built the almost exact same 3-bin composting system as you did…almost at the same time.. For me it was a two day process, but YOU have help!! 🤣)
Cheers, and happy growing!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Frank, thanks for sharing and congratulations on finally starting your garden project! Really sounds like a great project and hopefully you can get your fellow neighbors to start gardening as well, best of luck and have fun growing!
Rebecca
Great in-depth article! I hadn’t heard about the benefits of calendula to chickens. I will let my friends with chickens know as I do not have any. I do not have a dehydrator so usually air-dry all my medicinals. Calendula seems to take a bit longer than most to dry due to the resinous nature of them. I usually use brown paper lunch bags – left open for air movement and shake them often. I’m thinking I might try the mesh bags they make for laundry for drying. The mesh would be good for air-flow and could hang. I tend to run out of room for places to dry my herbs/flower. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Rebecca, thanks for the kind words and for sharing your experience with calendula and drying flowers, have fun growing!
Beverly Parkison
Great info. Thanks for sharing this. I have never grown them but will certainly give it a go this season.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Beverly, that is great to hear, calendula is a lot of fun to grow, is quite beautiful, and is a very medicinal herb/flower as well. Have fun growing!
Stacy Powell
I have only a few calendula plants at the moment so am not getting a ton of blooms at the same time. I would like to add these to my fire cider batch this fall. If I dry these as they bloom, how long should I store these in a jar until they’re no longer viable – or lose their medicinal properties to include in my batch? Does this make sense? Thank you!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Stacy, calendula flowers actually store really well if you dry them properly so I wouldn’t be worried at all about them losing their medicinal properties if you use them within a year. Just keep picking your flowers as they bloom as your plants will produce more flowers the more you pick them, hope that helps and enjoy your harvest!
Linda Bisson
Good Morning Deanna and Aaron…I reread this post after some of the calendula flowers that I dried have gone mouldy in the jar that I stored them in, and others feel soft to the touch (rather than dry and papery as they were when I retrieved them from my dehydrator). I am concerned that they all may turn mouldy…even though they have dried for more than 2 days. Some batches were infused immediately, so I am hoping the resulting oil is ok. Any additional ideas would be appreciated. I will dry for a longer period…usually at 98 degrees, from here on.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Linda, that’s too bad to hear about the calendula flowers molding on you, it’s hard to say about the calendula flowers in the oil (all you can do at this point is wait and see if it spoils or not) but for the flowers that have been dried already that aren’t yet moldy, I would try and lay the flowers out at room temperature or put them back into the dehydrator for awhile. We typically dry our calendula flowers for at least 72 hours at 98-100 degrees F as we like to err on the side of caution over having the flowers molding either in their storage jar or in the oil itself. Hope that helps and good luck on making your calendula oil and getting a surplus of dried calendula flowers!
Vicki
Hi
Thank you for all the information on Calendulas. One thing I am curious about, I would like to dry them to use Medicinally but there are so many really tiny black bugs in each plant. They don’t seem to want to go away or die. What can I do?
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Vicki, they could be tiny black bugs or it could be caterpillar poop that is left behind if you have caterpillars feeding on your flowers. If they are bugs, once you harvest the flowers, leave them in a basket for a few hours out of the sun. The bugs should leave the flowers once they notice that they are no longer living, you can then place them into a food dehydrator to fully dry them. Hope that helps and good luck!
TC
I have a question–if I want more blooms should I cut my long and leggy calendula and where? TIA
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi TC, our calendula plants will continue to grow and get taller but we don’t really trim them back all that much. Just keep up with picking the flowers more frequently and the plants will continue to bloom, as the plant gets older, the flowers will reduce in size and the plant will start to slow down in the amount of flowers it produces and no amount of pruning or cutting back will reverse that. Hope that helps and have fun growing!
Lisa
I use paperbags for drying petals and herbs is this wrong? Should I be doing it differently? My concern was always that they would go everywhere. I found your article the best one I read today I read quite a few you went into more detail of things I did not understand just wanted so say a big thank you!!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Lisa, using paper bags to dry flowers or herbs isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as you are able to dry them fully without mold forming. We use our dehydrators for a ton of stuff so it’s really easy for us to just use those for drying calendula flowers. Glad you enjoyed the article and maybe learned a few new things, have fun growing!
Angela
Thanks for the post and all the great info you provide. I cut off my first flowers and noticed a bunch of tiny little bugs inside. They were everywhere in a matter of seconds so I put them back outside. Very very tiny long brownish insects. Any idea what they could be? I’ve gotten so many bites while doing minimal gardening so I’m hesitant to keep them inside!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Angela, I wouldn’t be too worried about the insects biting you so you can likely still bring the flowers indoors for drying (will you be using a food dehydrator to expedite the process?). If you want the bugs to “jump ship” off of the flowers before you bring them indoors, you can likely leave them outside for several hours and the insects should leave the flowers as they sense that they are no longer alive. Hope that helps and good luck!
Lana
Hi Angela, we have those too. They are a little bug called a Thrip. As far as I am aware, they’re not harmful. I typically leave the calendula blossoms in a colander on a table outside for a few hours after harvesting and shake every so often to get as many of them out as we can.