Happy surprises: Plants who show up as "volunteers" that you like

I love it when plants just show up that you didn't plant yourself which are edible or useful.

Feel encouraged to post in this thread about your happy "volunteer" surprise plant finds in your garden/yard.

Why do the volunteers insist on popping up in the trackways?! I've got spruce and willow growing happily in the paths, where I'll have to transplant them from...

This one is a cow parsley plant pictured last year. Maybe not that exciting - it is a hedgerow wildflower where I grew up - but doesn't seem to be very common here. I don't know where the seed came from, but I just have to avoid mowing it in the hope it sets more plants I'm trying to get more diversity in. It does have some uses; but I (and the pollinators) just love the white umbel flowers!

Being one of the "lazy" compost makers, I now have a potato leaf tomato that came up in a plant over wintering in a basement window sill.  I'll have to wait until late June or early July to learn what type it is.

Nancy Reading wrote:This one is a cow parsley plant pictured last year. Maybe not that exciting - it is a hedgerow wildflower where I grew up - but doesn't seem to be very common here. I don't know where the seed came from, but I just have to avoid mowing it in the hope it sets more plants I'm trying to get more diversity in. It does have some uses; but I (and the pollinators) just love the white umbel flowers!

Huh. Just goes to show, location is everything! My parents have spent the last two-three decades trying to get rid of cow parsley from their garden... It grows like mad there. Do you want some seeds perhaps?

I am learning to be thankful for my volunteers! While they might not be in the 'perfect' placement in my mind, they tend to still be successful with some clever work.

I have found that my raised beds, for whatever reason, like to grow tomatoes from the previous years drops without any intervention. I tend to get a bunch of grape tomatoes year in and year out without any work. I let my chickens pick over the garden now at the end of the season to cleanup excessive dropped veggies, yet the seeds still find a way.

I have found that the balsam flower does really well in my area without much work. I started plants two years back and last year I had plenty of volunteers. I'm hoping to see more this year!

My favorite volunteers are garlics. I use them for greens when little else is available (I avoid cutting too many greens from my actual garlic patches so that they can grow). My volunteer cilantro also comes up a bit earlier than the one I sow. My bronze fennel also grows anywhere except where I actually planted the seeds. It's supposed to be allelopathic, but I just harvest the volunteers. Any volunteers in the hunger gap are appreciated.

one of the biggest yields in my garden comes from volunteer winter squash! I don't plant them, they just appear. My neighbor says that before my house was built (13 years ago) the old folks nearby farmed this whole plot and the seeds just stayed around from them. I think it's more likely that they come from compost, but anything is possible. I have serious, serious amounts of squash, and we feast on anything pumpkin/squash nearly all year round since they store well.

I look forward to the volunteer cherry/grape/current tomatoes that pop up every year.
I try to get other tomatoes to return but so far, no luck.
I do have about 3 gallons of dumpster tomatoes , fermenting in a bucket , waiting to be "sown".
It probably won't work, but it's free to try.

We're still figuring out what is here on the new property but the big pleasant surprises so far were a couple of big mullien plants, an extra rhubarb and a ton of turkey tail mushroom.
All things I wanted but wasn't going to try and track down in the first year or 2.

Grapes. Got some good Concord grapes from sprouts under my vines.
Peaches.
Tomatoes. Just wish some of my favorites would come back but they don't seem to.
Lettuce.
Arugula.
Parsley.
Pumpkins.
Tobacco.
Apples. Sadly, all have been crabs, but I keep hoping.
Hawthorn.
Shiso.

I encourage them by scattering the seeds around in the fall, and by weeding very carefully in the growing seasons so as not to accidentally remove useful sprouts.

I've just noticed small cabbage plants in the "Save the Aloe Vera" pot - so bonus.  Hopefully I can get them moving over autumn and winter.  Last year I got a whole lot of silverbeet (?chard) plants where the tomatoes were - so don't know what's up with that  They were, however, very welcome.   Not so successful- volunteer sprouting broccoli  (known as broccolini in the supermarket)  they must have been from a modified seed stock because nothing much happened except they grew 50 cm tall, leafy and the hares found a way under/through the fence and ate 'em up. No sprouting heads at all.

We may need a post on the not-so-welcome volunteers.   I reckon most of my unwelcomes have been from commercial chicken pellets, or compost.  
The ones I remember are cape tulip, (Moraea flaccida)  a nasty sort of Solonacae - a Datura, at least two types of nightshade, and stinging nettle (Urtica virens).   How come weeds flourish in spite of complete neglect?   Then we have feral olives - spread by birds, and so hard to eradicate. One positive of drought - they failed to germinate this year:D