I have some volunteer tomato plants growing in awkward spots in my garden. I don’t have the heart to yank them out, even though one of them is probably the offspring of a hybird variety, and thus won’t produce good fruit (I assume).
I had a carrot sprout up very early in the spring; evidently one of my carrots last year went to seed. I probably harvested the earliest carrot in all of the Shenandoah Valley. Some sunflowers volunteered themselves as well–apparently the birds missed a few seeds last year.
Meanwhile, my compost heap has donated several cucumber plants to the cause…
How about you? What plants have volunteered in your garden?
Just potatoes and probably chard. Quite glad about the potatoes, I think they’re a heritage variety that I really wanted to keep, and all mine in storage had gone funny when the cupboard got damp. They’re pink all the way through.
If they’re not that variety, I’m going to be really cheesed off though, they’re in an awful spot, as I’d redone the beds…
Some of last year’s lettuce apparently bolted and seeded before I removed it. I got quite a few nice heads of mixed greens when I finally harvested them last week before turning over the plot. (Yes, I was shamefully late getting the seeds in this year.)
I also dug up some volunteer potatoes, which were mostly ittybitty fetal new potatoes (as in, the size of marbles). Discovery: fetal potatoes don’t really taste very potato-y, or very good, for that matter; they’re rather bitter.
One valiant nasturtium also popped up and was doing so well that I transplanted it to the herb garden, whereupon all its leaves promptly withered away. I thought it was a goner but this morning I noticed that it’s put out some small new leaves, so maybe it will make it.
We have this rhubarb-like weed that keeps popping up all around. Last year we had several HUGE sunflowers spring up in our garden. The gold finches loved those seeds.
Strawberries–tiny strawberries. I don’t know if they’re naturally wild, or the result of squirrels and birds picking discarded strawberry tops out of the garbage can.
And of course the @#$%& morning glory vines that are choking the hell out of half the yard. Years ago, the kid behind us thought it’d be nice to have morning glories on the fence between our yards. Now, in addition to taking over half the neighborhood, they’re climbing up the telephone poles and along the wires.
Just tomatoes, I think they are the only ones strong enough to get up through the dense layer of weeds. <sigh> Hopefully I will get some work done out there this weekend.
Pumpkin. I recently bought the house and the previous homeowner, who had lost the place to foreclosure, actually took a couple of small trees when he left, leaving shallow holes. I tossed a decaying pumpkin into one and now have a small pumpkin patch.