It's strange to me that the year I have the most trouble starting seeds is the year I have volunteer plants popping up all over.
A tomato grows in the seed snail I started. Also a tomato next to my compost pile. The biggest most healthy pumpkin I ever had is taking over my food forest want-a-be. The earliest squash also growing in the Food forest want-a-be. Hollyhocks, but they always reseed themselves. Zinnia and a melon, probably cantaloupe in one of my raised beds. many, to many Malabar spinach, and lots of radishes everywhere. Borage also always reseeds itself, but this year the plants are huge. Large leaf plantain . Also some kind of melon seed that kept germinating when I use my worm castings.
With the exception of most of the Malabar spinach I will let them grow and hope for the best. If they are good, I will try to save the seeds. (I honestly always intend to save seeds of veggies I enjoy, and usually don't get it done)
This last winter was very mild, so maybe that is the reason for so many volunteers. I will enjoy seeing what I get.
Did you get volunteers this year? Do you let them grow?
Good luck with what ever you grow.
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Malabar spinach
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pumpkin
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squash
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tomato and radishes
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” — Abraham Lincoln
volunteers are the best, and what a bounty of them!
I've got volunteer borage all over the place, and the kale is growing increasingly feral as I let it set seed each year. Plenty of calendula that I don't remember planting, and the strawberries that I thought I'd killed with neglect are popping up in random places that they like better than where I put them.
Soil has yet to warm up enough to tell whether last year's tomatoes and tomatillos have moved themselves in yet.
The volunteers always seem to outperform whatever I actually planned. My best tomato last year was one that came up through a crack in the path next to the compost heap. Didn't do a thing for it and it just got on with it.
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