Thursday, May 17, 2012

Volunteer Plants


These cute little Violas growing at the base of my front porch are what my mother-in-law calls "volunteer" plants. They "volunteer" to come up from seeds left behind by the parent plant a year before. I call them "babies" and love them for the shear fact that they are free. In fact I have had great success with Pansies and Violas coming up from seed the following Spring. Of course you never know where they will pop up, or how many there will be, but it sure is fun to see them peaking out each year. Last summer, I had a bunch of Pansies show up in my lawn.

Other plants gladly give me volunteers, the most common being Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susan. This year my "Crater Lake Blue" Veronicas gave me six additional plants to transplant to other parts of the garden. I just love free.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of volunteer plants... each year I am inundated with cherry tomatoes and Mortgage lifter tomatoes. I just dig them up and transfer them to my tomato rows and wait to see what I get. Today as I was out weeding one of my many flower beds I noticed two purple petunias that came up as volunteers.

Anonymous said...

I too, have volunteer plants. Each year for about 5 years I have cherry tomatoes and Mortgage lifter tomatoes that come up as volunteers. Today while weeding in one of my many flower beds I noticed two purple petunias that I grew in that spot last year. Pretty neat!