How to grow and use Calendula Flowers for Beauty & Cooking

Calendula flowers are very easy to grow and useful in both your beauty regime and kitchen. These golden flowers can bloom from early spring until late autumn and I’ve even seen them showing off their colourful petals here in the winter when we’ve had a mild season. Blessed with a lovely colour that defies heat, you can use these flowers to liven up fresh salads, to naturally colour breads and cakes, and to add a mild peppery taste to soups.

Calendula is also a very effective yet gentle skin healing herb. Infused into oils or water, the petals contain compounds that soothe skin complaints and can also stimulate collagen regrowth in wounds. On my shop site, I recommend the Healing Calendula Salve as a natural ointment to keep on hand for skin injuries. You can also make your own beauty products using the recipes listed below.

• An edible flower that adds colour and mild peppery flavour to both sweet and savoury dishes. Use the petals only.
• Skin healing herb that herbalists use to heal and soothe skin conditions ranging from Acne, cuts and burns to rashes and Eczema. Use the petals only.
• Taken internally as a tea, herbalists use Calendula to soothe sore throats, treat ulcers, and heal urinary tract infections
• Easy to grow yourself using the directions below
• Comes in a variety of orange to yellow colours and with single and double petal arrangements
• Calendula officinalis is also called the ‘Pot Marigold’
• Purchase it online: Organic Dried Calendula Flower Petals

• Infuse the petals into oil or water to make a variety of beauty products
• Use a water infusion of the petals to make handmade Calendula soap
• Make a moisturising Calendula, Oats & Honey Body Cream
• DIY Healing Calendula Salve – The Nerdy Farmwife
• Essential oil & Calendula Acne Treatment – From Nature with Love
• Calendula Sugar Scrub for gentle exfoliation – HANE
• Facial Toner with Calendula extract – Growing up Herbal
• Mixed Herbal Healing Balm with Calendula, Comfrey, & Yarrow – Learning & Yearning
• Learn about other herbs and flowers you can use in making healing beauty products

• Treat yourself with homemade Calendula & Honey Funnel Cakes
• Homemade Pizza with Calendula & Wild Garlic
• Create an Elizabethan Salad with Calendula and other Edible Flowers – French Tart
• Sunshine soup with Squash & Calendula – Flowerfolk
• Orange + Calendula Carrot Cake – Darling Magazine
• Calendula Cupcakes – Greenside Up
• Homemade pasta embedded with Calendula petals – Pulcetta
• Savoury Calendula biscuits – Shawna Coronado

• Buy Calendula officinalis seeds online
• This is an annual flower that can survive the winter in mild climates. It self-seeds easily so once sown, you’ll likely never need to seed the area again.
• Can be grown in full sun or in shady conditions but it prefers sunshine
• Will grow in a wide range of soil types but prefers loose and rich soil
• Can be grown in pots or in garden beds
• Sow the seeds about 3-4″ apart in early spring after the last frost. Cover with 1/4″ soil and then thin the plants to about a foot apart when they’ve grown a few inches tall.
• Calendula needs plenty of water so make sure to water pots faithfully and to cover the ground with a water retaining layer of mulch.
• Will bloom from Spring to Autumn and even later in some cases. Harvest the flowers as they bloom and make sure to dead-head flowers that you’ve missed to control self-seeding and to promote new flower growth.

• Pick flowers early in the morning before the sun has a chance to evaporate volatile oils. Take the flower heads only.
• Pluck the flower petals from the flower heads, keeping an eye out for dirt or bugs. Some omit this step but leaving the petals on the flowers makes the drying process longer.
• Air dry or food dehydrate the petals. Ovens are too hot for drying the flowers without affecting their beneficial properties.
• For air drying, spread the petals thinly on a paper plate or paper towel and leave in a place both airy and out of direct sunlight. The petals should take about a week or less to dry completely.
• Food dehydrating: spread the petals thinly on each tray and use a low temperature (30C/90F). Take the petals out as soon as they are crispy dry which should take a few hours depending on how many trays you have going at the same time.
• Store the dried petals in a labeled air-tight container out of direct sunlight. Use within a year.