Hi, I just want to share with you a great winter bloomer for Fl. I am not sure if you familiar with the Calendula plant. This beautiful plant we used to have in Ukraine. This is a medicinal herb and has nice blooms. I discover for myself it likes our FL winter so much. It blooms nonstop all winter when nothing is blooming (still blooming even right now), it did not get any frost damage @ 28F. It has several varieties single and double, you can collect seeds and plant it every season, you can make tea using its blooms.

Sounds like a winner of a plant!!

It blooms all summer too right????By the way, I'm freezing today so I bet your candula is if full bloom Are they available
locally? And are there a variety of colors? This is the buds on my chocolate pudding (black Sapote) tree.

Any plant that has an extended bloom period is a great plant!

Ok guys, this is an annual plant for FL, because it does not like the summer heat, that is why I called it a winter bloomer. You can grow it from seeds; I got seeds from Big Lot store. They are available single and double bloom from yellow and orange.

I grew Calendula in winter 2010 but not this one, and I wish I had seeded them again. It absolutely IS an annual, peters out and gets very leggy and ugly once the weather gets hot and muggy. But it very well might self-sow if you let some seeds mature on the plants. The colors go great with nasturtiums, which are my other winter staple. They don't make it through summer for me, either.

Bright yellow and blazing orange are the most common colors, but I got some fancy varieties with pastels, pale yellow, cream and apricot shades - I think they were called "Art Shades" - from Burpee's catalog. I collected seeds from the pastel plants, but they most likely won't come true to seed.