I had to cut down the last of the shungiku- largely because the ailing plant had become a scale and aphid factory. I kept it going for a while because it was feeding the ladybugs and bees, but it was finally time.
Luckily the bees have plenty to snack on besides a giant dying spindly chrysanthemum.
Like potato flowers!
My big old potato bed is a roaring success- which is wild. I also love that my purple potatoes are flowering- purple!
Hopefully I’ll have one or two yummy new potatoes soon before I have to toughen them up. But the potato flowers are an encouraging sight.
Also encouraging- the scarlet runner beans. I can see why some folks plant these as ornamentals- they are gorgeous!
I see many beans in my future.
My cough syrup herb- never used but to feed the bees- is blooming like mad.
So is the agastache I saved from the defunct bed.
But my pride and joy is the African Blue Basil. I have succeeded in perennializing it! And now it is basically the bee zone.
I was going to move it to near the tomatoes but they seem to be getting plenty of buzzing attention without the basil’s help.
The weather is still just flipping between hot and sunny and cool and muggy, but the plants seem to have settled in now that most are in beds.
It’s a strange time of year for this much weather shock- but I’m glad things flower despite it.
The Neanderthal Gardens 
Yes, those runner beans are cool. You know, I have never grown them. I could never determine if they were grown more as an ornamental or more for bean production. I just stick with the beans that I like, and that I know are very productive.
From what I hear they are a good hybrid bean in the sense that you can eat the pods as green beans when they are new- or dry the beans for excellent storage beans. I’m planning on using them green- but I’ve had scarlet runner beans as shelled beans before and they are tasty. They are supposedly very productive- I guess I’ll find out!
Well, exactly; and I should have done the same. There are actually pink and white blooming varieties . . . although that sort of defeats pare of the purpose of ‘scarlet’ runner bean.
yeah- for me that they’re pretty is a side bonus- unless I hear that the fancy ones taste better I have no reason to grow them.
Fancy ones? Is this not a fancy one?
I mean it was a flatlands but as far as I know it’s the standard scarlet runner bean.
Flatlands? Is that a variety?
The company Flatlands Flower Farm- they always have the early/rarer/weirder veggie varieties. They tend to be expensive too so we don’t always get them- but they also have the weirder/cooler tomatoes.
They must consider Scarlet Runner to be fancy enough for them.
Pretty basic bean- in seed packet form- to find them in 4” pots was new for me.
Oh, I remember that. potted bean.
I wasn’t gonna do beans this year but in the chaos as I realized I’d be stuck at home for a while I was buying the most interesting veggies so I could amuse myself. If I like these- next year I’ll be sane and grow it from seed.
Beans are one of the primary choices, not because they are my favorite, but because they are so reliable. Also, there is a lot of fence space to grow them on.