Unexpected volunteers

[digitS']

Everyone has heard about my orach plants until they are sick of them .

Cascade Giant pole beans volunteer for me; no other green bean ever has. The tractor guy took out the bean volunteers the second time he came back. A few more sprang up! Moving them around has worked. We will see if it does this time in all this heat ...

Cilantro, dill, perilla, and anise hyssop volunteer in my veggie garden

I have grown dahlias continuously in the same garden for 5 years. Snapdragons are still showing up! So do larkspur but they aren't especially nice plants. Mountain bluet, interspersed with Johnny Jump-ups, would like to take over the yard here at home!

Steve

 

[valley ranch]

Here in the high desert the volunteers in the veggie garden are lettice, onions, potatoes, and weeds of every sort and size.

 

[Smart Red]

I have at least three bean plants that popped up in the asparagus bed. I have volunteer lettuces in three of the raised beds, in the front of the house, and in the butterfly garden. Go figure! There are some tomato volunteers that I'm saving and moving after checking with last year for varieties planted last year. There are onions that I missed last year.

After the winter of 2011-2012, I had potato plant volunteers growing everywhere potatoes had been planted the year before.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm so glad to have found this thread, as this is an experiment I am going to undertake for next year. The guy that promoted this BTE gardening method plants his next year's potatoes each year when he harvests his potatoes...he picks out the biggest one and puts it back in the ground. Been doing that for 11 yrs now? Using the same potatoes in the same place in all that time. Impressive!

Anyhoo, I'd like to take that further and plant many of my veggies that are known to grow as volunteers in the spring. I had started tomato seedlings inside this year and, after setting them out, found a tomato volunteer outside my chicken coop that was the same size and condition of those I had nurtured inside. Clearly, they don't need my nurturing, as this one was growing in some very hard packed clay soil, though it was getting some good nutrients leaching from the coop.

So, I'm going to bury a rotten tomato from each plant right next to that plant at the end of the season and cover that soil with wood chips. Come spring I will rake back those chips and see what comes up. Same with the squash, taters, sweet onions, peppers, lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, and even corn will be planted in the fall, covered over and then uncovered in the spring to let grow as they can and to see if it can be done. I've had volunteers from a lot of these in the past except the onions, but I plan to order the seeds themselves to plant this fall so that I'll get an early growth of sweet onions in the spring.

I've already got row markers on hand so I can label the rows and where they are so I can tell where to uncover in the spring.

 

[curly_kate]

@Beekissed - Can't wait to hear about your results!

 

[ninnymary]

Beekissed, your method makes sense. I don't think nature needs as much help as we think we do.

Mary

 

[Carol Dee]

I'm so glad to have found this thread, as this is an experiment I am going to undertake for next year. The guy that promoted this BTE gardening method plants his next year's potatoes each year when he harvests his potatoes...he picks out the biggest one and puts it back in the ground. Been doing that for 11 yrs now? Using the same potatoes in the same place in all that time. Impressive!

Anyhoo, I'd like to take that further and plant many of my veggies that are known to grow as volunteers in the spring. I had started tomato seedlings inside this year and, after setting them out, found a tomato volunteer outside my chicken coop that was the same size and condition of those I had nurtured inside. Clearly, they don't need my nurturing, as this one was growing in some very hard packed clay soil, though it was getting some good nutrients leaching from the coop.

So, I'm going to bury a rotten tomato from each plant right next to that plant at the end of the season and cover that soil with wood chips. Come spring I will rake back those chips and see what comes up. Same with the squash, taters, sweet onions, peppers, lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, and even corn will be planted in the fall, covered over and then uncovered in the spring to let grow as they can and to see if it can be done. I've had volunteers from a lot of these in the past except the onions, but I plan to order the seeds themselves to plant this fall so that I'll get an early growth of sweet onions in the spring.

I've already got row markers on hand so I can label the rows and where they are so I can tell where to uncover in the spring.

Interesting experiment.Let us know what happens.

 

[digitS']

I won't have a tomato volunteer this year. Often, I can move one to the end of the patch and see what becomes of it. Indoor starts only get about half the jump on the season as what one might think they should, given their weeks of coddling. Transplant shock must cut about 50% of that time.

Still, I've never once had a delightful experience with a tomato volunteer ... usually, nuthin' ripens before first frost. Knowing what they are might help. Growing so many hybrids really stacks the deck against success ...

I do have some potato volunteers after our mild winter. They are in the onions. Fortunately, these are scallions and coming out. Unfortunately, cucumber starts were going in there!

You can see how I'd never be very happy as a permaculturalist and maybe not even as a hunter gatherer ...

Steve

 

[Hal]

I harvested some bean seed recently of both Idaho Refugee and Magpie from volunteer plants that had grown without human intervention and had survived frost with nil damage.
The plants were green, pest and blemish free and the seed turned out to be some of the best quality bean seed I had harvested from the past growing season in terms of seed size, fullness and color. I'm keeping this volunteer seed aside for selection purposes now maybe if I keep allowing some volunteers each growing season I can possibly improve the hardiness of the beans by repeating the process each year.

 

[Beekissed]

That's sort of what I would like to see as well....sort of a sorting the wheat from the chaff on these heirloom seed plants. Do they still retain their hardy vigor that made them into an "heirloom" variety after all these years of pampering? I'd like to find out.

I do the same with my chickens and I'd like to start having a garden that's more self sustaining as well.