Jackie, see, I told you it was a hollyhock and that it was about to explode, lol. It's loverly. And the tomato, being a seedling, could have no telling what genes in its background. Early Girl is a complex hybrid. But whatever its ancestry, it's well-suited to your conditions, lol.

Those two are the best kind of garden surprises I could ever expect in my lifetime. Congratulations! Only in California!

I love your garden...and what happy surprises to get a hollyhock and a tomato plant. :)

Thank you all. Yes, you never know what is going to "pop up" in the garden! After all of the care we gave/give the other tomato we planted on purpose, this new volunteer is healthier, more vigorous, making WAY more tomatoes, and they taste better than the ones on the "pampered" plant! Sigh. Not complaining, really, but it is ironic, no?

Jackie

Lovely garden, Jackie! In my experience volunteers are always more vigorous. I've taken to throw dill seeds around the garden in the hope that at least SOME of them will thrive...

I guess if plants plant themselves, they are more vigorous (like weeds!).

Jackie

Garden fairies visit gardens where there's a lot of plant activity going on. Jackie, I envy you your volunteer tomato. We, too, have a volunteer tomato, a large and thriving plant that showed up where DH dug a planting hole for a future fig, using compost from our heap that included kitchen scraps. It's a fine plant that has flourished in spite of weeds and drought and has set fruit, but I doubt whether it will be able to mature its crop so late in the season as temperatures have just dropped. Impressive, though.

We've deposited vegetable waste here and there in the garden where we needed organic matter, and it is fun to see what comes up. Squashes are a big one, very pretty with their big leaves and yellow flowers and their climbing habit. Once I had date palms sprout, though they didn't survive removal into a pot. Currently I have a mystery plant that's popping up all over the yard. I think it's a palm, too; the question is, date palm, or is our clump of three Trachycarpus fortunei seeding itself about? I know the trees have been fruiting for a few years now. I've also found that palm seeds germinate pretty well, possibly after more or less of wait. On the other hand, some years ago I collected Mediterranean fan palm fruits on a trip to Genova: could it be that the seeds, which didn't germinate before I lost track of them, got scattered about and are finally coming up? It will interesting to find out.

Lovely garden! We too have a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes that we did not plant this year. We planted them last year. Apparently the ones that dropped to the ground seeded this year's plants. Very pleased!

My huge volunteer tomato plant has managed to produce about 2 dozen ripe tomatoes so far, helped by the 5-6 days we had last week which were over 100 degrees F. Today, however, a cool storm has moved in, and it has been raining steadily, without stopping, for the past 4 hours, and shows no signs of stopping. My DH ran out and threw a rope around our volunteer huge hollyhock, to attach it to the fence, as of course it is in full bloom, and was being blown over. The tomato looks like it is enjoying the rain. This storm is quite early for us - usually we don't get any rain until late Oct/ early Nov. Of course, I am delighted. We turned on our irrigation last March, and last night is the first time since then it has been turned off. Yay!

Jackie

Save seeds from that tomato. Just let them dry out.

Now about 'green tomatoes'. They make an excellent sausa, lots of recipes on line, as well as the southern classic Fried Green Tomatoesl in addition to the put them in a warm place and let them ripen off the vines.

In my childhood, I remember hollyhocks blooming much earler in the summer (and being biennials). Did that beauty do all that in a single year and if it did you could have an annual hollyhock really worth special handling.

stillann - good idea about making salsa out of the zillions of green tomatoes I am sure we will have.

I thought about it a lot, and I now think that that giant hollyhock probably showed up last summer as a small mound, but I did not pay any attention to it (I did not weed it out because I thought it was cute, but had no idea what it was. It did not start to get huge until this year).

I am not sure about saving the tomato seeds - I will think about it.

Jackie

When a large leafed plant started growing at my neighbors, we thought it was a squash. When it shot up a spike and flowered it turned out to be a black Hollyhock - who knows where it came from. They really get around.

Volunteers are fun! That Hollyhock has a nice color. I freeze soft vege scraps in a bag and when enough for the blender I lightly blend and move mulch pour out and recover to composte in place around the yard. I got lovely butternut squash that was so nice that I planted them in the two years since too.

The volunteers are usually the best! Definitely save seeds! We get volunteers all over the yard. "The Goddesses" LOVE tomatoes and help themselves to every one they can steal. Then they "plant" them all over the place and they all germinate. If you have problems germinating tomatoes, try running them through your dog first. WORKS every time!

Just when you think you've heard everything...

OK, I will save seeds from the tomato.

Stephanie, what a good idea! My DH makes lovely compost - mostly using all of the zillions of leaves we have from the trees. However, I know he would like some veg stuff for his pile too. Maybe I will try your plan.

Jackie

Wow! I get volunteer hollyhocks all the time popping up and they never look like much. Yours is spectacular ! And a delicious tomorrow to boot. That is so cool!.

I did get two new roses that have popped up but a tomato would have been nice

I always let rose volunteers grow until they bloom, and then until I can figure out if they repeat or not. So fun.

Jackie