Isn't that a nice surprise? We have a cherry tomatoe that has come back for it's third year. They are a blush pinky orange cherry that must be a cross of some kind or maybe an heirloom I lucked in to. The first year it seeded was where black cherry's had been so we transplanted and it grew HUGE and sprawled all over the place. We moved it the next year to the area of the asparagus at the end of a raised bed and again, it sprawled everywhere. We already have volunteers coming up again! And yep, we're just gonna let it sprawl all over the place again. It's pretty with the asparagus ferns.

Congrats!

I love volunteers Free food and flowers!

I wish marigolds would reseed in my yard. I hear they do for others. I can't get them to come back for the LIFE of me. :) I'm trying again...I have four or five packs of seeds!

I'm like Dawn. Weeding can get.."complicated." Jerreth offered to weed a patch for me, Saturday. When I got to looking, and explaining what I saw, and what I wanted left, she almost quit.

Black Cherry was a surprise volunteer, if I recall.

George

This is just so awesome. Strike that "40 or so" estimate and replace it with "200 or so." My partner was almost stressed about what to do with all of the tomato plants, so it was perfect timing to share that I was going to Spring Fling. Best ground cover ever.
@Lisa, I'm not a skilled seed saver by any means, but I have a whole 1/2 gallon of marigold seeds from last year, because they are easy to save right when deadheading! On further inspection, very few of my volunteers are marigolds. I'm trying zinnas this year too to see if I like them just as much. They seem to sprout just as easily!

Yay volunteers! I have brassies that overwintered and are now in bloom. Any veggie or flower that wants to volunteer is better than bermuda, johnson grass, field bindweed or nutsedge.

George, You and I are exactly the same in that regard. I hate to waste a plant I can use elsewhere.

Karoliberty, It still might be too cool for the marigold volunteers to sprout. I am pretty sure I generally don't see them sprout until late April or early May. Sometimes I get marigold volunteers in June or even July in areas where I had marigolds the previous year. I mulch heavily, and some volunteers have a hard time sprouting and making their way up through heavy mulch, so mostly I see volunteers early in the season when there's not a new, thick layer of mulch on the beds yet.

I agree, Bon. I just pull out all the weeds and leave as many volunteers in place until I can find a place to which to move them. Of course, I get a lot more than I can move, so at some point, they have to go, but I love having them and try to find spots for as many of them as possible.

Dawn

Volunteers are like presents on Christmas, the more the better. Sometime you have to get creative to find a place for them but I usually can. Since the tornado I am seeing mostly Iris and Daylily, I can't wait to see what colors the blooms are.

the first bed I made and planted onions i used mulch [shredded leaves and grass] from my house and now there are marigolds and zinnias coming up everywhere.

My onions are in the soil that grew tomatoes last year. I've pulled more tomatoes than the onions I put in. I have 37 varieties of tomatoes to grow this year, I can't deal with unknown volunteers, just no place to put them. But it is interesting what comes up!

The few times I've allowed volunteer tomatoes to grow, I've been pretty entertained by what they produced. Never impressed, by entertained! About the only thing I will mess with trying to do anything with are herbs. I seem to have ten times better luck with volunteer cilantro than what I plant. I generally transplant them to a more desirable location early with lots attention to treating them gently. Little suckers like to bolt, if I don't do it early or I rough them up at all!

I still have volunteer potatoes sprout up where I grew them 3 years ago. Unfortunately it's usually in the middle of a row and never in a location I can just let them go!

Once I get my seed saving garden going, I'll be a lot more tolerant to volunteers. In some cases I'll even invite and encourage them!

The one thing I've never seen sprout voluntarily is basil. I normally plant 3 or 4 varieties and will almost always have some go to seed. Any ideas?

Generally I do not let tomato volunteers stay. I don't have the space to waste on a variety that might not be a good one. I have a real specific list of what I want to grow and 'unknown' varieties aren't on my list. With other veggie varieties, it depends on what they are. Sometimes I let squash plants stay since the SVBs eventually will get them. The volunteers that most interest me are herbs and flowers. I've always got room to pack in a few more herbs and flowers in an out-of-the-way corner here or there. With zinnia volunteers I sometimes get interesting color changes or petals that roll or cup or double flower heads where it looks like one zinnia is wearing a smaller zinnia as a hat. It is an interesting look.

I get the same thing with occasional potatoes sprouting here and there, and a couple of times they have popped up in places where I haven't grown potatoes in three years. They're almost never where I can let them stay.

I don't know why your basil isn't volunteering, but have a guess or two. One guess is that maybe you're growing a cutting-raised sterile variety like "African Blue" that does not produce viable seed. It seems highly unlikely to me that you are having a lack of pollinators, but that could be another possibility. Perhaps pollinators are in short supply when your basil is flowering. Or, you're deadheading the basil before the seed is mature? I have basil reseed everywhere----front garden, back garden, in raised beds, in pathways, in sandy loam, in clay soil, etc. Often, I get the volunteers around the edges of the compost pile, probably resulting from me throwing basil flowerheads that have gone to seed onto the compost pile when doing garden clean-up.

I have a potato plant growing where I have never planted potatoes. Maybe it is from a grocery store potato that I dumped out there at some point and it rolled downhill. LOL

Carol, That is so funny. I've had that happen before too and always wondered how a potato pops up in an aera where I never have grown potatoes.

This past weekend I finally managed to work in the back garden and it doesn't have nearly as many volunteers as the front garden, or at least it doesn't yet. I mostly grow hot season plants back there, though, so maybe it hasn't been warm enough. I do have lots of wormwood vounteers, and I'm going to plant them all along the fenceline on the west fence, where the sandiest soil is found, in the hopes that maybe they'll repel the voles. The established plants are more in the interior of the garden and the voles don't bother them, though they will nibble plants right beside them. I can always find a spot to move volunteer plants to. I'm going to move some of the front garden's volunteers to the back garden merely as a test to see what the voles will and won't eat. If they eat the volunteers, at least they're eating free plants that sprouted on their own instead of plants I've grown from purchased seed or that I've purchased.

I love basil.....and I hate basil. I love sweet basil and like pesto or even just the leaves on sandwiches, or sliced tomato with fresh mozzarella and basil, but I have planted several other types that I really didn't like. If it taste like licorice, then I just yank it out and compost it. I also think cilantro is a nasty tasting plant and I can't even stand to smell it, so it never grows in my garden. Some years I have had a few basil plants volunteer, but my biggest volunteer plant is usually beans. I usually move those, but like Dawn and others, I yank out the tomato plants. All of the squash we had in the Fall last year was from volunteer plants. I have had marigolds many times, but I have never had zinnias reseed. Some of you have poppy plants every year and I can't even grow one.

My son weeded my onion patch while I was gone and didn't know I was planning on leaving a few marigolds that came from my mulch. They came up like crazy and he plucked some of them out. Its ok cause there are plenty more coming.

Carol, Maybe you have too much moisture for poppies. Your higher moisture levels likely are the reason that zinnias don't reseed for you too.

Kim, At least he meant well and the onion patch is weeded. It is a good thing more volunteers are coming. I get the heaviest load of volunteers in February through May, but more will keep coming all summer or at least until I get a really thick layer of mulch that deters them from sprouting. I am seeing new volunteers in new places this week and I'm happy about that.

Dawn

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone that took some volunteer tomato plants today! It was so great meeting everyone.