Why Did My Desert Marigolds Die?

Q. I have several Desert Marigolds in a sunny area of my yard. They are on a drip emitters, 2 gph, set to run every other day for 10 minutes. They are planted in an amended soil mix of Rejuvinate soil mix, potting soil, vermiculite and perlite. I have a medium bark mulch over the area. They did extremely well the first couple of weeks, growing well, with lots of flowers. Then they seem to die off.  I can pretty much break off the tops at the ground level. This has happened with several plantings. Any idea what's going on?

A. Desert marigolds are plants that are very sensitive to irrigation. They cannot be treated like petunias or French marigolds. Normally, petunias or French marigolds we would prepare the soil about the same way we would prepare a vegetable garden. Watering these plants frequently is critical in our hot desert.

Watering Desert marigolds frequently will kill them. I'm willing to bet that they came down with root rot because the soil was kept too moist. Desert marigolds do very well with a limited number of irrigations.

Putting a wood mulch on the soil surface did not help either. It just kept the soil moist and promoted root rot.

They will do extremely well with improved soils but if that soil was kept too moist because it is on a valve with other plants that require water more often, it will kill them.

I would put them in an area where you could hand water them every couple of weeks and not put them on an automatic irrigation valve.

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