This section is from the book "The Gardener V3", by William Thomson. Also available from Amazon: The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener.
There are two of these that I use somewhat largely, and which I can highly recommend; the one is Tagetes signata pumila, the other the pigmy dwarf orange French Marigold. Both produce yellow flowers, and attain a height of some 12 inches. If sown broadcast over the beds about the first week in April, they become during the summer perfect carpets of showy useful yellow blossoms, and neither sun nor rain mars their beauty. I merely dig over the beds in the spring, and on no account do I use any manure, and I tread the soil firmly over the bed previously to sowing the seed. William Plester.
 
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