Have you ever noticed that those volunteer plants that just pop up in your garden often do better than those you started from seed early in the season indoors? I started borage indoors, transplanted it to a big pot, and it is doing fine. However, this borage just popped up on its own in my vegetable bed late this spring. It is huge!
The stem is as thick as a ball bat!
YES! I have a volunteer cherry tomato that is growing like crazy! It has oodles & oodles of maters (way more than it's mama from last year!) Hard part about them, is I let this plant sprawl (we have to mow around it, lol! and the maters are hard to find - they are hidden under the fortress of many many leaves!) This pic was taken over a month ago. It's way bigger now! I call it "Wild Thang"
LOL! Yeah, that's a wild thing, alright! Perhaps the volunteer plants are the real survivors of the mother plant. Who knows how many other seeds did not germinate. Even the occasional volunteer I find in my starter trays seem to be heartier.
Weez, I planted ONE borage plant in my yard one year when I was renting. The next year there were several and by the following year they were spread everywhere. NOT that they were really invasive, just that seedlings showed up in many spots and flourished.
Volunteer plants are put where they were meant to be by a higher power! Aren't they always extra tough!! They are our BONUS plants!
Bonnie
Maybe you are right, Bonnie, but why in the middle of the leeks!
Yes, Darius, they self seed like crazy, even coming up in gravel.
snapdragons come in in the sidewalk cracks in front of my house! I used to pull them, but not anymore! I leave them for the little children that are going on walks with their parents now.
Ive been pulling up hollyhock seedlings left and right from all my plants this year dropping seeds before I could get to them. The neihbors have more hollyhock than they ever thought could exist. LOL
Two years ago, I started growing Lychnis flos-cuculi. I really like the plant, the shaggy pink flowers, etc., but it is an aggressive self-seeder. This year, it was all over the beds, in the pots... everywhere. I potted up several flats and there are still more! I don't think it will escape to the wild, so I'm not going to commit genocide. http://davesgarden.com/pdb/go/1909/index.html
These butternut squash volunteered in my flower bed and since they were doing better than those I started from seed and planted in the vegie garden I left them. They are taking over but all the shrubs and flowers there were getting stressed from the sun and needed some shade anyhow.
Nice patch, Mary! I'd keep 'em too.
I just hope there is enough length and warmth in the rest of our growing season to ripen them. Our weather has turned cool the past few days and will continue for a few more. As always, these weather changes are good for some things and bad for others.
Nice squash, Mary. They don't do well here, but most of the summer squashes do OK, if protected.
oooooh - I LOVE volunteers! Won't use Preen or anything similar because I need to see what might come up from seed. Weezingreens - I had borage everywhere after putting in a couple of plants last year - do you think it's an "invasive" ? I'm considering putting a few plants in a sort of "waste" area of our property; the bees certainly love it! (but don't want to do that if it will end up as a pest plant) I have coriander and dill growing amongst my onions, seeded themselves from some kind of "mesclun" mix that I planted last year - the onions certainly don't seem to mind. And I re-planted sunflowers that came up around the bird feeder, and they now have huge flower heads, complete with bumble bees. And let's not forget the red elderberry bush that I discovered in our yard, which my hubby accidentally cut down several times but it moved itself to a less accessible spot!
Weedwhacker, I don't consider a plant a pest unless it has underground runners I can't jerk out, or it sets seed every place... gee, I guess that must be my oxe-eye daisies! If a plant sets seeds, but is easily pulled or transplanted, I don't consider it a problem... like little violas. They are always a pleasant surprise. I was surprised to see volunteer arugula growing in the gravel next to my raised garden plot. It was the best looking arugula plant that year!
When I was at my daughter's place in Knoxville over the weekend, I saw two tiny sedum plants coming up between the bricks in the wall by their driveway. They were about a half inch in size and cute as a button - volunteers growing in the mortar!
You've just got to admire the tenacity of plants. You see those little volunteers struggling up between the cracks in sidewalks or any place, for that matter. It just goes to show almost anything is possible if you don't have some preconceived idea of what you should expect from life.
Weez, right on! Our preconceived ideas and thoughts limit us so much!
I planted celosia plumosa at my mailbox three yrs ago. Even tho I pretty much weed that area once a week, I now have 18" volunteers which, while gorgeous, wreak havoc with the rest of the "design". They look downright weird, but I have left them because I am hoping for seed, and also I just gave up, enjoying how beautiful, while out of place, they are. The neighbors in my subdiv must be scratching their heads as this is what I do for a living, and I am usually very particular about my mailbox. I think it's funny. Maybe it will be a "new" type of design!
Jay (smooth)
Jay, sometimes downright weird is downright beautiful. Some of my most beautiful arrangements of plants were a total accident.
LOVE those volunteers, I have snapdragons coming up through rocks lining our front drive, throughout the other garden beds, sturdy and thriving through drought and heat. The stone steps going down to the lower drive are a cascade of allysum, all gifts of mother nature, free, perfuming the air, and asking for nothing but the occasional sprinkle from the hose. One year I had dill coming up all over my raised beds, and had a hard time pulling it out because it was so pretty! I guess I feel if it works that hard at surviving, let it be!!
Amen!
Talk about volunteers, I have a New Guinea pink impatients growing under my camellia and I have never every planted one at all! Must have been a gift from a bird. lol
Speaking of birds......I have four orphan corn plants growing in the oddest places, one next to a japanese maple off to the side of the deck, another in the middle of the lawn, (getting mowed down regularly but refusing to give up, and two more in the middle of flower beds...gifts from the birds I guess, since I don't have the space to grow a crop of corn...I'm leaving them and will likely use them for Halloween decorations next month! Since nothing else has grown well this year, I admire their tenacity!
MaryE - that's a wonderful clump of greenery your squash makes up against that fence. Pretty pic. Looks like it's swamping a little tree as well.
A good portion of my garden either self seeds, root spreads, or gets planted by some mischeivious bird. From volunteer juniper trees, to a thriving redbud in the back yard; little yellow daisy types that came from the desert on some wind or other, to the spring violets that come up somewhere different every year. I enjoy them all.
The redbud has completely changed that corner of the garden - shading out what was thriving and encouraging the cerastostima to move into the vaccuum left by the disappearing miss. primrose.which wanted more sun. But someday that redbud will provide much needed shade from the scorching west side afternoon sun.
