I am thankful for volunteer plants.
Or another way to say it is, "I am thankful for plants that seeded themselves from last year." When I find an unexpected plant, I tend to leave it alone whether or not it fits into my landscape plan. It seems when nature picks the place for a plant, it grows much better than when left to my hands.
Here are a few of my volunteer plants and for them I am thankful.
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| Birds are responsible for spreading a lot of seeds including this sunflower from our bird feeder. I'm looking forward to seeing it bloom. |
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| Next to the sunflower are basil plants which I had planted here last year. I have since thinned these a little and shared the extra plants with friends. |
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| On the other side of the basil is this single parsley plant that I planted last year. Even thought it's not a volunteer, it's remarkable all the same. It has gotten huge. That is a full size watering can for scale. I was going to trim it back to perhaps get more foliage instead of blooms, but we still have parsley in the freezer that we got from this plant last year so I just let it go to see how big it would get. |
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| Moving along to the other side of the parsley is a volunteer yellow cherry tomato plant. We had one here last year that produced very well. This one is already getting large. I'm hoping to soon find the best way to contain it. I had meant to stake it, but that ship has sailed. BTW, I did some weeding in this bed after I took the pictures. |
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| Moving onto another part of the yard to a bed we calling the lightning bed. We call it that because this is where a huge pine tree was until lightning blew it apart one day. Here we have a volunteer marigold surrounded by more basil. Don't know what kind of basil, but this is a milder one than is growing in the other bed. I had one basil plant in here last year that was an extra from a friend. From that one plant, volunteers are everywhere. Maybe the wind had something to do with it. |
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| There are also a couple of dill plants that came up among the basil. I planted a couple of volunteer dill plants in this bed last year from another part of the yard. We didn't get much dill because some creature enjoyed munching on it.. |
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| There is a volunteer tomato plant in the lightning bed, also. Last year, there was one tomato plant in this bed that was an extra someone had. It didn't do much because the deer kept munching on it when it would grow a little bit. This one has been munched on, also, but has recovered. Another tomato that needs some kind of control. And soon. |
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| More basil in the lightning bed. I have dug up and moved some of it to another flower bed just for the flowers and a treat for the bees. |
Volunteer plants are the best! Your parsley plant is huge! And I like all those basil plants! I, too, have a volunteer sunflower plant growing, which might have come from a handful of seeds I put out for the birds, one time.
ReplyDeleteWhere the parsley is is the same spot a huge variegated basil plant grew a couple of years ago. Either it gets a good combination of sun and rain or there's something special in the soil there.
DeleteI just realized that I’ve been tossing random sunflower parts out my bedroom window. Next year, I may have a nice outdoor wall covering of them.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe this year, you'll see something. Sunflowers sprout pretty easily.
DeleteWe have dill growing all over our yard. We have had many interesting volunteer plants over the years--one was some sort of gourd that had cross-bred back by our compost pile. I dn't think it was on the roster of any identifiable gourd, but it was fun to watch grow.
ReplyDeleteAn unusual gourd sounds like a lot of fun to watch. Just like something that would interest me.
DeleteThe best cantaloupe we ever had was some that grew out of our compost pile. Years later, Wally still talks about it as one of his fond childhood memories.
Spring will be an eye-opener for you, hopefully.
ReplyDeleteI bet it will.
DeleteMy basil volunteers pop up everywhere. I dry and powder the leaves when I get the time. My mustard spinach got away from me too and volunteers pop up everywhere. I do eat the leaves though, but can't eat enough to keep it under control, so I pull the rest. I still get pop up cherry tomatoes too and I don't mind those at all.
ReplyDeleteI have planted basil every year for a long time and this is the first time I've had volunteers. Interesting that you have them everywhere. I wonder if that will happen with me again?
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