However, volunteers are one of the things that make gardening so interesting.
Two years ago while in my friends backyard, that's all food and no grass (so awesome), I first heard the term volunteer (for you avid gardeners don't laugh too hard at me, I know I can be slow). In gardening terms that means something that grows in your yard that you didn't intentionally plant.
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| volunteer sunflower |
I know what you're thinking - weeds. No one asks them to come in and they are constantly showing up. But no, not weeds. Volunteers come from things you already have (or had) in your yard like seeds from your flower or say a tomato that fell somewhere you didn't notice. Next thing you know the following year there's a tomato plant growing in the middle of your coneflowers. Or rhizomes, which are roots sent out from your plants (in my case strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries) that send up a stalk in a new location.
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| volunteer vine tomato with an American lady butterfly |
Finally, you can also get volunteers from your compost. Anything you put into compost that had seeds can end up growing in your yard. Seeds are tough and resilient. They don't decompose well. That's a good thing. I also tend to throw my Halloween pumpkins into the garden, especially in my front garden, to enrich the soil. It usually takes two springs and I'll have pumpkins growing...and then comes the task of figuring out how to manage them, because large pumpkins take up a LOT of space.
This year I have more volunteers than ever. I have 5 sunflowers I didn't plant, but had to have come from the bird seed (this is a first). I also have 2 small gourd plants, or little pumpkins, for the first time, which are awesome.
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| the gourds that tricked me |
At first I thought they were yellow squash because the plant leaves and flowers look the same. I plant yellow squash every year (because they're fun to grow - I also found out it is on the top 10 list of plants that are grown with GMO's), so it wasn't a surprise to see a plant that looked like yellow squash. However I had one growing in the middle of the grass and another in the middle of my native wildflower garden - no where near where I had planted them. I transplanted the one in the grass to the yellow squash box and was confused when the squash came up round (I was a bit slow in figuring out what was growing OK?).
My last volunteers were tomato plants. Last year I grew several and more than ever. So this year I ended up with over 8 tomato volunteers. Some grew bigger and faster than the ones I started from seed back in early March, others came up quite late and I pulled them because there's no way with the short growing season in Chicago they would produce.
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| volunteer sunflower whose pollen feed the bees and seeds are now feeding the birds |
Volunteers can be a lot of fun, it's like a miniature science project...I love to see what survives, what endures, what just has to live! However there's usually not enough room in a small city backyard for all volunteers. The challenge is to choose what survives. Wouldn't it be great to have a bigger yard!
What volunteers did you get this year? What are your favorites?
Alexandra Gnoske is a Nature Lover, Writer, and Environmental Expert.
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