Nona’s Guide to Using Marigolds for Pest Control

“Have the flowers bloomed? That helps keep the pests away,” said Nona Sorongan.

I had just returned from the garden when she asked that question. It seemed she wanted to make sure that the marigold flowers she had planted in the Poopo garden were still alive and had begun to bloom.

My feet were still covered with mud from the rice field paths. The smell of wet soil clung to my clothes, mixed with the scent of grass and smoke from distant kitchens in the village. The afternoon wind blew softly across the gardens. Somewhere nearby, I could hear the sound of insects hidden among the leaves and the flowing water from the small irrigation canals that crossed the rice fields.

The light that afternoon was slowly turning golden. The mountains around the village were beginning to disappear behind thin mist. In places like ours, afternoons often feel slow and quiet, but life continues moving everywhere at the same time. Some people return from the gardens carrying vegetables or firewood. Others continue working until sunset. Chickens wander freely across the yards. Dogs sleep beneath wooden houses. Smoke rises slowly from kitchen fires. And somewhere between all of that, flowers continue blooming quietly without asking to be noticed.

She is my mother. Even though she is already over 70 years old, she is still a ‘Nona’ (in Indonesia, ‘Nona’ that means “young lady”). Her name keeps her forever young. Her full name Nona Sorongan.

Sometimes I think names carry prayers from the people who give them. Perhaps my grandparents never imagined that their daughter would spend decades living between gardens, rice fields, flowers, kitchens, mapalus, children, and the endless cycles of planting and harvesting. Yet somehow the name “Nona” still suits her. Even at her age, there is still softness and brightness in the way she cares for plants and remembers small things inside the garden.

My mother never speaks like a scientist. She does not explain things using complicated agricultural terms, research papers, or scientific presentations. Yet her hands understand the soil better than many experts. Those hands have planted rice for decades, harvested cloves, peeled coconuts, cooked for the family, carried firewood, cleaned fish, and worked under the hot sun in the gardens since she was young. The lines in her palms feel like another kind of library—a library written not with ink, but with labor, memory, survival, and experience.

Her body itself feels like an archive of village life. Every scar, wrinkle, and movement contains memories of work and endurance. People like my mother rarely document their knowledge in books or journals. Their knowledge survives inside gestures, routines, habits, instincts, and relationships with the land.

I realize now that many Indigenous women are knowledge keepers, even if they are rarely recognized as such. They preserve seeds, recipes, farming methods, medicinal knowledge, ecological observations, and social relationships without ever calling themselves intellectuals or environmentalists.

Hearing what she said, I immediately turned to the world’s library. I typed the keyword “marigold repels plant pests” into the search engine, Google. I had to make sure that what I heard from my mother was true. I am a skeptical person, after all. Being skeptical keeps me thinking and critical.

At the same time, I also realize that skepticism can sometimes distance us from the knowledge closest to us. Modern education trained me to search outward for answers, while many answers had already existed around me since childhood—in gardens, rivers, kitchens, forests, and conversations with older people.

Perhaps that is also the difference between my generation and hers. My generation was taught to trust knowledge that appears on screens, in articles, journals, videos, or scientific institutions. We often believe something becomes more valid once it is written digitally and supported by academic language. Meanwhile, my mother never needed the internet to understand nature. Long before I typed the word “marigold” into Google, she already understood which flowers protected the chili plants, which seasons brought pests, and which signs in nature indicated changes in weather.

She understands the sky in ways I do not. She can often predict rain by observing clouds, wind, air temperature, or the behavior of insects and birds. Sometimes she notices things so subtle that I completely miss them. And most of the time, she turns out to be right.

My mother only finished elementary school, yet she understands how to care for and maintain plants without using harmful chemicals. I doubt that her knowledge about marigolds repelling pests came from the internet, seminars, or agricultural training. She is not familiar with technology, and most of her time is spent in the garden, in mapalus (communal labor), or with her husband, Rolly Wuisan, making Cap Tikus. I am more convinced that this knowledge was passed down from generation to generation—from her ancestors, or perhaps learned from fellow women farmers during mapalus.

Mapalus itself is more than communal labor. It is also a social system of mutual care and shared survival. People help each other plant rice, harvest crops, build houses, prepare ceremonies, and solve problems together. Through mapalus, relationships between humans are maintained alongside relationships with nature.

In many ways, mapalus is also a living school. People exchange knowledge there naturally while working together. Someone learns how to plant properly, how to recognize healthy soil, how to care for crops, or how to survive difficult seasons—not through formal lectures, but through participation and experience.

In Minahasa, knowledge does not always come from classrooms. Sometimes it moves quietly between people while planting rice together, exchanging seeds, preparing food, or resting together in the fields after hours of work. Knowledge is carried through conversations, habits, observation, and repetition. Sometimes people do not even realize they are preserving knowledge while practicing it in everyday life.

There are forms of intelligence that cannot easily be measured by certificates, diplomas, or academic titles. The ability to read seasons, maintain fertile soil, recognize medicinal plants, predict weather, or understand ecosystems are also forms of intelligence. Yet modern society often treats such knowledge as backward simply because it does not emerge from universities or scientific institutions.

I read many websites and research references about marigolds and natural pest control.

The more I searched, the more I realized that modern science was only explaining what people like my mother had already practiced for a long time. Scientific language may describe the chemical compounds, ecological systems, and agricultural functions of marigolds, but people in villages often understand these things through direct relationships with the land itself.

Sometimes I wonder how much traditional knowledge has disappeared simply because younger generations no longer trust what older people know. Many forms of ecological wisdom vanish quietly when forests disappear, when agricultural systems change, or when people leave villages and stop planting altogether.

In Minahasa, marigold flowers are better known as tai koko flowers, or “chicken dung flowers.” Perhaps because of their strong and distinctive smell, they are called that. Marigolds belong to the genus Tagetes. Their Latin names vary depending on the species. The two most well-known species are Tagetes erecta and Tagetes patula. Tagetes erecta is the type planted by my mother.

The flowers themselves are very striking. Their yellow and orange colors stand brightly against the green fields. From a distance, they almost look like small suns growing from the soil. When the wind blows, they move gently along the edges of the rice fields, bringing life and color into the gardens.

Sometimes beauty in villages appears in simple and unexpected ways. Not through expensive architecture or carefully designed landscapes, but through flowers growing beside chili plants, orchids hanging near a hut, or sunlight touching wet rice fields after rain.

The genus Tagetes was classified and described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It is worth noting that Carolus Linnaeus is known as the father of modern taxonomy—a botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician from Sweden. His name is familiar to us from science lessons in school.

In English, Tagetes is called marigold. It is commonly planted in home yards or gardens as an ornamental plant. In some places, it is now cultivated as a pest-control plant. According to satuharapan.com, in agriculture, marigolds are effective in preventing plant-damaging nematodes and are used as companion plants, insect repellents, herbicides, and antifungal agents.

There are two main methods of using marigolds. First, they are planted because their scent repels pests. Second, they are used as refugia plants. According to mongabay.co.id, refugia—a term derived from Spanish and similar in meaning to the English word “shelter”—refers to vegetation areas within or around farmland that serve as habitats for the natural enemies of pests. These areas become homes, transit spaces, shelters, and food sources for predators and parasitoids.

Researchers from the State Polytechnic of Jember have also studied the use of marigolds in controlling arthropod populations. Marigolds are used as refugia plants to manage pests naturally.

From the various sources and references I found, I came to the same conclusion as my mother.

Perhaps the internet and scientific research did not teach me something entirely new. Instead, they helped me understand that many forms of Indigenous knowledge already contain ecological intelligence that modern systems are only beginning to acknowledge.

This realization also changes the way I see my mother. When I was younger, I often saw village knowledge as ordinary because I grew up surrounded by it. Only later did I realize that many people in cities, universities, and environmental movements are now trying to rediscover sustainable ways of living that communities like ours have practiced for generations.

The marigolds in our garden are planted along the edges of the rice field. Dozens of them grow in neat rows. Their flowers have just begun to bloom. Their bright yellow color stands out among the green leaves. Near the marigolds, several chili plants are growing well. Their leaves look healthy. There are no pests. They have also started to bear fruit—large and thriving. The chili plants near the marigolds appear healthier than those planted elsewhere in the garden.

Bees move around the flowers. Butterflies occasionally land on the petals before flying away again. The garden does not feel silent. It feels alive. There is movement everywhere—wind, insects, leaves, water, flowers, and people working together with the land.

The closer I pay attention, the more I realize that gardens are not isolated spaces belonging only to humans. They are ecosystems where many living beings coexist together. Birds search for insects, bees collect nectar, worms move beneath the soil, fish swim in ponds, and humans participate within that larger cycle rather than standing outside it.

Besides helping control pests without pesticides, marigolds also beautify the garden. Seeing the flowers bloom beautifully instantly relieves the fatigue of working in the fields.

There is something calming about seeing flowers growing among food crops. The gardens no longer feel like places that only produce harvests and labor. They also become spaces of beauty, rest, and emotional connection between humans and nature.

Perhaps this is something modern industrial agriculture often loses. Large-scale agriculture frequently treats land merely as a production machine, while traditional gardens still leave space for beauty, relationships, biodiversity, and emotional attachment.

“It may be just a garden, but it still has to be beautiful.”

That’s what my mother says.

At first, it sounds like a simple sentence about flowers. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that the sentence contains a larger philosophy about life itself.

Perhaps it reflects the lives of many people in the village—people who continue planting even when harvests fail, continue working despite exhaustion, and continue caring for their land even while facing economic difficulties. Beauty, in places like our village, is not luxury. Sometimes beauty is part of survival itself.

There is also something poetic about hearing those words in a place connected to captikus production. Fire is always present there. Coconut sap is cooked and distilled through heat. Smoke rises daily from the hut. Burning is part of the process of survival itself. Yet my mother still insists that flowers must exist around those spaces.

Maybe that is her way of resisting harshness. A quiet refusal to allow life to become only labor, smoke, heat, and exhaustion.

That is why she plants marigolds in our garden. In the past, these flowers were abundant in our yard, but now only a few remain. My mother has always loved flowers. Taking care of flowers at home is normal for her. But planting them in the fields—that is something different.

Perhaps she does not see a strict separation between productivity and beauty. For her, gardens are not merely spaces for economic production. They are also living spaces that humans share with insects, flowers, water, soil, and other living beings.

I sometimes feel that older generations understood balance better than we do today. They planted food, but they also planted beauty. They worked hard, but they also made space for rest, storytelling, music, gatherings, and rituals. Life was difficult, but not entirely disconnected from meaning and relationships.

In addition to marigolds in the rice fields, she also takes care of orchids in the garden where my father makes captikus. The orchids, taken from the forest, are arranged around the daseng (hut) where the distillation takes place. When they bloom, the hut feels completely different—alive and pleasing to the eye.

The contrast is interesting to me: around the daseng, there is smoke, fire, and the smell of alcohol distillation, yet there are also delicate orchids blooming quietly nearby. It feels like another reflection of my mother’s words: even in places filled with heat, labor, and burning fire, beauty must still exist.

The orchids themselves feel almost symbolic. They are fragile yet resilient at the same time. They survive attached to tree trunks, exposed to changing weather, rain, sunlight, and wind. Yet they still bloom beautifully in difficult environments. Perhaps humans are not so different.

After resting and enjoying the beauty of the garden, I continue planting rica (chili) and feeding the carp in the pond. Because only by planting and nurturing can we harvest.

The act of feeding fish, planting chilies, watering plants, and maintaining gardens may appear small, but these repetitive actions slowly build an entire way of life. They teach patience because nothing grows instantly. They teach responsibility because living things depend on care. And they teach humility because humans ultimately cannot fully control nature.

And perhaps planting is not only about producing food. Planting is also about maintaining relationships—with the earth, with memory, with ancestors, with family, and with the future.

Every seed carries time inside it. Some seeds carry memories of grandparents who planted before us. Some carry the hope that future generations will still know how to grow food, recognize seasons, and live close to the land.

And by growing and raising our own food, we can be sure that what enters our bodies is healthy—free from harmful chemicals. Sometimes I think this is also a form of independence: to remain connected to the land strongly enough that we can still feed ourselves from it.

In many Indigenous communities, food is not separated from identity, spirituality, territory, and culture. Losing the ability to plant often also means losing stories, ceremonies, language, and relationships with ancestral lands.

As the sun slowly disappears behind the hills, the marigold flowers continue glowing along the edges of the rice fields. Quietly protecting the garden, just as knowledge passed down from older generations continues protecting our way of living, even when the modern world often overlooks it.

And perhaps that is the quiet lesson my mother has been teaching all along: that caring for the earth does not always begin with grand theories, international conferences, or complicated technologies. Sometimes it begins with very small acts—planting flowers beside chili plants, preserving seeds, feeding fish, sharing work through mapalus, and continuing to nurture beauty even in difficult conditions.

Sometimes wisdom survives not because it is loudly defended, but because it continues to be practiced quietly every single day.