Vera

There is a practical caveat that makes the strategy slightly worse than neutral, though, and it is worth knowing for a real garden.

Small tubers carry less stored energy. A seed potato feeds the shoot until it establishes roots and leaves. A very small one gives the plant a weaker start, which in poor conditions or a short season can mean a smaller crop — not for genetic reasons, purely because of the packed lunch.

The usual advice is to plant medium tubers, or to cut large ones into pieces each with a couple of eyes and let the cut surfaces dry before planting. That gets the energy without wasting the biggest potatoes on the ground.

So: eat the big ones by all means, and use medium rather than tiny ones for seed.

The catch, and it is a large one for your storage plan: true seed does not come true.

Tubers are clones, so a variety propagated by tuber stays exactly that variety indefinitely. True seed is the product of sexual reproduction, so every seedling is genetically different from the parent and from its siblings. Potatoes are also highly heterozygous, which means the variation between seedlings is dramatic rather than subtle — different sizes, shapes, colours, flavours, maturity times and disease resistance, all from one fruit.

So you cannot store true seed of a named variety and get that variety back. You get a lottery.

That is exactly why breeders use true seed — it is how new varieties are created — and exactly why growers do not.

The other half of the reconciliation is that the low-intervention approaches are not tolerating weeds, they are occupying the ground with something chosen instead.

Mulch, ground cover, green manure, close spacing, interplanting — all of these are ways of denying weeds light and space without hoeing. Bare soil is what generates weeding work, because bare soil is an invitation and weed seed is present everywhere.

So the systems that claim you can stop weeding are usually correct about the outcome and describe a different amount of work, not none. Establishing a good mulch is more effort up front and much less through the season.

What I would actually do in a vegetable bed:

• Mulch generously between and around plants.
• Weed hard for the first few weeks after sowing or planting out.
• Cut rather than pull later in the season where you can — roots left in place hold soil and feed it.
• Never let anything set seed. This is the one rule with no exceptions, because a single plant going to seed creates several seasons of work.

The ants are almost certainly not interested in the tree. They are farming aphids.

Aphids feed on sap and excrete a sugary liquid. Ants collect that liquid, and in exchange they protect the aphids — driving off ladybirds, lacewings and parasitic wasps that would otherwise keep the colony in check.

So a stream of ants up a trunk is a reliable indicator of an aphid population somewhere above, usually on the newest growth at the tips where the sap is easiest to reach. That is why you cannot see what they are going for from the ground.

Check the underside of young leaves and the soft new shoots. You will probably also find sticky residue on leaves lower down, and possibly a black sooty mould growing on that residue, which is the other classic sign.

The warning that has to be stated explicitly: only ever native species, and in many places moving amphibians at all is regulated or prohibited.

There are well-known cases of introduced amphibians becoming ecological disasters — the standard example being a toad introduced for pest control on a different continent, which spread uncontrollably, is toxic to predators that try to eat it, and has caused enormous harm.

And moving animals between ponds — even native ones, even locally — is a recognised route for spreading amphibian diseases that have devastated populations worldwide. That is why collecting spawn from a wild pond and moving it to yours, which sounds harmless and used to be common advice, is now discouraged.

So: check what is legal where you live before doing anything, and default to habitat rather than translocation.

First step before anything else: identify it. Everything about the answer depends on the species, and the answers differ enormously.

The pattern you describe — extremely fast growth, hollow or soft stems in the first year, bark developing later, aggressive suckering from roots at increasing distance — fits several well-known invasive trees. Some of them are notorious specifically for this behaviour, and some are regulated in various places precisely because of it.

Photograph the leaves, the bark, and any flowers or fruit, and get it identified locally — a garden centre, an extension service, a local naturalist group, or a plant identification community. It takes a day and it determines the whole strategy.

It matters for a second reason: if it turns out to be a species listed as invasive or notifiable where you live, there may be obligations on the owner and support available to you, which changes the conversation with your neighbour completely.