View original posti had considered the possibility of raised beds but the only suitable wood around here is redwood and it gets expensive to do a redwood raised bed compared to regular treated lumber which i have no idea whether it's food safe or not... instead we just got some old wine/whiskey barrels last year and are using those in lieu of putting in the money for proper raised beds. i have the majority of my herbs (listed below in reply to DomA) in barrels with the exception of chives which we put in the ground because the container we bought them in was mislabeled as leeks i need to get my mint into a containment scenario, we end up using way more than we have growing and it's always a battle to wait for more to grow before cutting it back again.

Yes, I'd been thinking of adding chamomile to my herb list, its my main tea and I've got a tea ball for loose leaf so I'm wondering if it might be better fresh. I do a lot of mint tea during the mint overflow season and it is better.

Raised beds, I just use untreated lumber and let it decay, truth be told you probably could use CCA pressure treated lumber safely, I don't think there's really much risk of chronic toxicity unless you're already a big shellfish eater. Even then, its really just root crops that's a risk for. If you're favorite dish is clam and potato chowder you might need to worry, but the only root crops I saw on your list were beets and carrots so I'd go treated. I plan to replace with it, especially with my breakup and rearrangement to the comb layout I noticed how much they' rotted in a relative short time, I don't want to have to replace my boards every 5-10 years, of course I virtually no seafood so I wouldn't be in the risk zone anyway.

I use vinaigrette too but probably not as much as I should, raspberry normally. I probably should start experimenting with home made. Hadn't considered something spicy, but yeah that would probably be better.