marigolds sprout but never get past first set of true leaves

I am like Charlie Brown and Lucy's football. I have tried to grow marigolds from seed many times. Formerly I would sow them in 4 in. pots. They would sprout but never get past the first set of true leaves. This year I thought I'd try to fool them to thinking they were in the ground, so I put potting soil in a 10 inch container and sowed them. They came up in only 4 days (it was already hot weather here in Texas). Most have put on one set of true leaves, but they're just sitting there as always in the past. If you are going to tell me to use perlite or a sterilized mixture of some sort, then tell me how people have sown them for hundreds of yearsin the ground in ordinary garden soil and they come up and do well? They are NOT "damping off." They simply won't grow past a certain stage. They're stuck in childhood. I use a good potting mix, but as I say, people grow them in "dirt" in the ground all the time and they are one of the easiest plants to get to sprout- they and cosmos and zinnias. I water properly- only when the soil is dry a few inches down.

How long have they been sitting there? They may be spending time developing their root system a little more and once that happens then their growth will take off. It will probably also help if you give them a little bit of diluted fertilizer, the seed leaves have some nutrients to get them started but once those get used up they can use a little help from you.

Hi, ecrane3! Good to see you over here. I'm ready to wait it out all summer and fall, up until the first freeze around Dec. 1. I thinned them tonight because I thought maybe they were "competing" with each other, and there were precious few roots.
I still maintain that these should be about the easiest thing there is to grow, but this has happened I don't know how many years. When I was a child, women would scratch them into the old worn-out dirt, and I mean dirt, not soil, and wait for a rain, and they would come up and bloom their heads off. I just don't get it. I do realize that container plants are totally dependent on us for their nutrients, water, and other needs, such as being in proper light.
I guess I will lightly fertilize. It can't hurt- as long as I don't burn them.
Again, thanks for your comments, and see you around!
You're not connected with the ecrane radio company, are you?

Nope, never heard of that company! I usually start seedlings off with 1/4 strength fertilizer. The other thing I'd check is that they've got enough light and heat, if they're too chilly (like if you've got them indoors in the A/C) or if they're not getting enough light they may not realize it's time to grow yet. And sometimes there's something special about starting them outdoors--no matter how hard you try, you can't really duplicate garden conditions, so maybe you'd have better luck if you direct sowed them in your garden next year at whatever the appropriate time is. Some seeds will do better that way than trying to start them in pots. I haven't grown marigolds since I was a kid (direct sowed them in the garden!) so I don't have any personal experience to speak of, but I'm sure someone else will come along who has started these in more recent years!

I live in a patio house, and have no flower beds, only a few shrub beds. No place to put marigolds in the ground. I started these maybe 2, 3 weeks ago OUTSIDE on a porch with morning sun. After they sprouted, that is, after about 5 days, I moved them into an area that gets at least 6 hours of direct sun a day. The daytime temps here are now near 100, and lows maybe 78 to 80. They are not too wet or too dry. There has been absolutely no damping off.

Now that I think about it, I think the company that makes the outstanding AM radios is C Crane rather than E Crane. They are in CA, however.

Your temperatures might be the problem--I didn't realize it was that hot down there already. 100 degrees is really hot and a lot of plants won't actively grow when the temperatures are that high. Unless you're expecting a good stretch of cooler weather in the near future, you might try bringing them in the house and see if being in cooler temperatures helps them at all, only trouble then is you'll have to readjust them gradually to being in the real sun when you move them back out again. In a climate like yours, you're probably better off starting the seeds quite a bit earlier in the year so they have a chance to get big before the hot weather hits.

They should do fine in high temps (we are in mid 90's and higher) but I direct sow mine in the ground. How big is the pot they are planted in?

Do you have little baby seedlings though? Marigolds will do fine if you start them earlier in the spring and they're decent size by the time the hot weather hits, but for little tiny seedlings I'm not convinced they'll do much growing in 100 degree temps.

I sincerely appreciate all the comments from you good folk. I am going to dump these and move on to other projects. May try again next spring. However, horticulturists here encourage people to start their fall crop of marigolds in early summer so they are up and running by cooler weather. There are so many other good plants to cultivate, no need in focusing so much on this particular project which appears doomed.

I started mine late last year by direct sowing in mid May which is kind of late.

This year I just have volunteers with a few blooming and some are very small plants. We are in our 3rd year of a drought which is why I didn't sow any this year (we are having some really tough water restrictions this year).

Maybe you just need to wait a little longer then--I always thought of marigolds as being more of a summer/warm weather flower which you would start in the spring, but when I grew them as a kid I was in Cleveland where the summers are very cool compared to yours. So if these were supposed to be for fall bloom, then maybe they'll hang out how they are for a while and not grow much while it's super hot out, but as temps start to cool off in the fall maybe they'll take off. So I guess if you have something else you wanted to put in those pots then ditch them, but otherwise you might as well hang in there and see if they do anything later in the year.

Hi again e, they are all in one somewhat large but not very deep container. I'm going to just watch them and attend to their water needs until they either die or grow. It doesn't make any sense that they can just sit there in suspended animation for weeks and weeks. Today they look healthy enough, but I didn't spot any new leaves. I'll report back when something changes. It's been fun, and TKS for your attention. I have not fertilized, but should have time to do that Th. or Fri.

I would transplant them into larger individual containers ( like a 3.5" pot, the ones that come 18/flat), keep them on the somewhat dry side, but not so dry that they stress, and in a bit of shade to combat the 100 degree temps.
Heres why-transplanting will stimulate root growth, keeping on the dry side will encourage root growth also and the shade will help bring the temps down somewhat from the 100 degrees. Fertilizing is good too.
Ecrane is right-100 degrees on seedlings are tough, its a lot of stress.

Don't throw them away! As long as they've germinated and got them on to their first set of true leaves, they'll be fine. I think they might have watched-pot syndrome? Make sure they're not in full sun all day (probably mostly eastern sun) in the morning is good, and let 'em be.

My 2.5 cents worth. Lostsa luck!

Hi dp72,
In the complex where I stay, they had a "bed" that wasn't much deeper than 5" (There is a pipe going along a wall, and for some reason somebody in the past decided to plant some flowers there. Don't know why they didn't just cover it with cement or rocks or something) anyway, they had these tiny Marigold plants flowering their socks off most of the summer. Our temperatures are more or less the same, and even though the plants never got higher than 6"or 7", they made up for it by really flowering better than anything I've ever seen.
Hope your's decide to do the same.

Good luck,
Elsa

I'm back. Here's a photo of the marigold seedlings taken on June 21. Think they have a chance of developing into full-grown plants? I'm not going to transplant any of them. I'm just going to have a container of them. I realize I'll do a lot more thinning if they stay alive and grow.

Absolutely - if they've gotten this far, they'll be fine, but you had better start yanking soon!

thanks, pagancat. i'll be out there in the morning. should i leave about 5? (eventually)

I'd say 5 if they were plants that you wanted to keep around for a long time, but you can crowd annuals a bit more - I can't tell what size pot that is, but you could probably get away with 3 in the middle and the big ones at the outer edges.

You can do it! Lookin' good.