Joao Winckler

Autumn planting is so much more sensible for the awkward ones. I keep meaning to do the fridge thing properly and it never happens, seeds just sit there until I forget about them. At least buried outside they get on with it.

Cosmos are brilliant for this, just let them go to seed at the end of the year and they sort themselves out. Mine come back in different spots every time, usually places I'd never have thought to plant them.

The patience required is real. I made a batch last year that I thought was a disaster and now it's genuinely lovely. Time sorts out a lot of things with citrus preserves apparently.

seconding the need for another plant. even the supposedly self-fertile Elaeagnus really do seem to want a pollinator nearby. five years of good flowers with nothing is a long time, but adding a second goumi should sort it pretty quick.

I'd leave it personally, just to see what happens. First time I got a flower on mine I panicked and cut it off. Plant was fine either way but I've always been a bit curious what would have happened if I'd just let it go.

I ended up building a plant tracker for this exact problem, leaftide.com, mostly for my own garden but the concept transfers. Even for personal use manual counting is unavoidable for physical stock, but a simple log of what you planted, where, and how many survives way better than memory when deer or weather inevitably surprises you.

Nettles are probably the one I've made most peace with. Cook them, dry them for tea, compost activator, liquid feed. The moment I stopped trying to eradicate them and just kept them corralled to one corner things got a lot less stressful. Bindweed though, still haven't found a reason to keep it around.

ha, great idea for a thread. I've got cayennes and a couple of banana peppers going this year, mostly in pots against a south-facing wall. They're one of the more reliable crops when you get the positioning right, even here where the summers are a bit unpredictable.

Bindweed, without question. That stuff finds its way into every bed no matter what I do, and the roots go so deep that by the time you've pulled what you can see there's another metre of it still underground waiting.

Peach salsa is something I keep meaning to try. Those 9 quarts of sliced peaches will be good come winter, and the chutney idea is solid too - peaches with a bit of ginger make a great one.