Tagetes patula/ French Marigold how can I use it?

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steliyana

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Hi there!

Just picked up a bunch of tagetes patula, the dark orange ones and was wondering what to do with them. Dry them and infuse them? Infuse them fresh? Use inly the petals or the whole flower head with the green part? Is such oil good for soap or for a salve? Maybe I can dry them and grind them for powder, I read it is used for food coloring, so I can color my soaps, if it survives the lye;)
 
Dry them. You don't want any moisture in them if you use them for infusing oil. The combination of moisture in fresh petals and oil will produce bacteria. You could use it for either soap or salve. Why not make both if you have enough oil? :grin:

Since calendula is used for coloring soap, I think tagetes would also work well. You could powder some petals to keep on hand for coloring. I have a friend who makes goat milk soap and she sprinkles calendula petals on top and the yellow and orange petals really offset the pale cream of her soap.

I'm basing this on what I've seen of calendula - I've only seen the petals used but I don't know why you couldn't use the green part. The only thing I can think of is the green might effect the color and make the yellow (or orangish color) appear more muddy. But don't hold me to this because I really don't know if it would.
 
I use only dry flowers infused in olive oil. For soaps pure olive oil, for salves organic extra V OO. It gives a very nice color to the soap. The green thing goes to composter;))
 
Thanks for the replies. I am drying them and will let you know of the results, I think I will powder some and some will sprinkle on top of my soap. They are not so many as I thought. But will see if the color will survive CP soap making. Or if the powder will create some color. I now remember I infused some last year, the whole thing fresh but looked kind of ugly green marshy color. Could have been full of bacteria too, smelled strong and nice of tagetes though. A year later smelled OK, I used it for rubbing on my hands.Do you always infuse only dry herbs? Many places say dry or fresh???
 
I don't know why some people say to use fresh botanicals. The moisture in them will eventually cause the oil to grow nasties. You may have gotten lucky with your oil from last year and the oil was acidic enough to prevent growth. It's also possible there wasn't moisture left in the petals. I don't know but I do know I wouldn't trust infusing fresh botanicals without thoroughly drying them in a dehydrator or oven.

You can do an experiment - toss some petals in a little oil and leave it sitting around for a few days. Then look at it and smell it. Of course, the beginning stage of microbial growth can't be seen without a microscope and initially doesn't have an odor. But the microorganisms are there, happily proliferating so you may have to leave it a little longer than a few days. Even storing it in the frig won't stop these hardy wee critters, I'm sure everyone is familiar with the game of "Identify the Food". The game people play after finding a container of food which had been shoved to the very back of the frig and hidden by bigger containers. It goes through the stage of wonder, confusion, dawning horror and then a malevolent feeling to traumatize someone else. Thus the standard hollering of "Honey! Come here! I want you to see something."
 
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