I like having calendula and nasturtium plants in the vegetable garden. My companion planting guide tells me they excel at bad bug control and, besides, it looks pretty.

But you can have too much of a good thing.
Today The Engineer and I worked on discovering what, if anything, had survived their uncontrolled rampage while our backs were turned.


It wasn’t as bad as it looked. The garlic has now been harvested and is drying in the glasshouse, we unearthed some brassicas, silverbeet and squash, continued planting out more seedlings


and the goats were more than happy to deal with the weeds.


Same thing happened to me last summer ..I had allowed them to self seed, and they basically became ground cover. I left them there over the winter as a a cover crop, but they started setting flowers before I was ready to plant tomatoes etc, and it turns murdering flowers is really hard ..
I’m placating my conscience by “thinning them out” rather than getting rid of them entirely. At least they’ve kept the ground clear of too many weeds.
They are better behaved here.
Ours need a little tough love