I had a lot of work to do yesterday, the carrots and potatoes weren’t even the half of it.
I had to wrestle the sun herb bed into shape for one.
That sage is super overgrown. And the chamomile is no longer viable. Well for me anyways. I had a few cups of chamomile tea from this plant. They were delicious. And I got super sick. Turns out chamomile doesn’t agree with me.
Out it goes!
After ripping out the poison flower and hacking away at the sage, it was time to plant.
I got a marjoram, and three types of oregano to add to my extant Italian variety. Mexican oregano, Greek oregano, and the exquisite smelling Syrian oregano.
I like oregano.
After planting I put down a top dressing of compost and dressed that with the mulch.
The most fun mixed bed is yet to come.
I got two late season tomatoes on a whim.
The first is a Lemon Boy,
Nice yellow guy- nothing wrong with that.
I’ll let the label of the second one speak for itself.
Dancing with smurfs!
A blue cherry tomato!
I had to try it.
They’re in the purple pea bed, and to help with the inevitable bugs I sowed a few borage seeds along with every last one of my chive seeds.
I’m gonna have to get tomato cages at work soon.
But this is nice.
What’s also nice is blueberries. But what about a pink blueberry?
(Of course this raises a few ontological questions on whether a pink blueberry could be considered a *blue*berry but I’m just going to think happy thoughts about berries)
To grow any kind of berry you need acidic soil, so I chucked a bag of azalea mix into a 10 gallon fabric pot and potted it up all pretty.
It should really be on a milk crate for better air circulation to the roots, but an old basket was all I could find.
The final job was to plant my tree collard.
This presented an issue. Collards, tree or otherwise, are brassicas. Aka cabbage maggot bait. I want perpetual collard greens, and I’m not about to let some silly flies get it my way.
So I decided to try out an old wives tale.
You wrap the roots in aluminum foil. They can grow out the base, but the sides and top are protected from flies.
Hopefully.
Anyways he’s a pretty tree-to-be and at least I’ve done my due diligence with regards to my eternal fly issue.
Don’t talk to me about cauliflower I will cry.
The Neanderthal Gardens 
Dancing with Smurfs?! . . . ummm . . . yeah
Anyway, that aluminum foil technique looks questionable. I really don’t know how the critters work though, or what it takes to keep them away.
Did you dry your chamomile before making tea with it? It is supposed to make one ‘less’ sick, not more sick. Well, you know that.
I’m a sucker for a colorful veggie. It is a pretty questionable technique! But it’s the only technique I can find that isn’t just “use diazinon” So I’ll give it a shot. And yes, I dried my chamomile, and it kept giving me stomach aches I’m afraid. No chamomile for me!
My technique to avoid insecticides is to simply not grow the vegetables that the insects like. Of course, that would be a problem if it affected the important ones like the whole Cruciferous group!
I prefer ‘conventional’ vegetables. However, my diet is supposed to include more of the dark colored vegetables, which happens to include dark tomatoes, dark potatoes and such. (Fortunately, my favorite ‘Detroit’ beets have always been dark.)
That is a bummer about the chamomile. I have grown a lot of it because it naturalized around the outside of the garden. However, I just gave it to neighbors. I am none too keen on it. My preferred herbal tea presents another problem. Catnip attracts bobcats.
Bobcats! Now that’s a problem!
They would not have been a problem if they had not trampled everything underneath the hanging pots where the catnip grew (to keep it out of their reach).