Who Doesn't Love a Volunteer?

They are popping up everywhere! Little gifts from the garden. Unplanned but most welcome are these little volunteer seedlings of lettuce, cilantro, tomatillo, even melon. This is the benefit of a garden that is in its second year. Last year's plants left their seeds, and I just love surprises!! Amazingly, some of these volunteer plants grew in exactly the perfect location.

This volunteer sunflower is inches from the pavement, right where the gate post is. I couldn't have selected a better spot.

Will someone please move that basketball hoop?

The shade of the tomato is perfect for this lettuce volunteer. By the way, just look at the tarragon on the left!

And then there's this little cantaloupe growing in the perfect corner where it can spill into the area behind the bed.

Cilantro is my favorite herb and that's a good thing since it reseeds everywhere. This one chose a great spot next to where I planted spinach seeds. (The spinach hasn't germinated yet in this picture).

The trick is to learn to identify seedlings. One year I nurtured a plant for months that I thought for sure was a penstemon, only to find out it was a weed. Even worse was the time my gardener got ambitious and decided to weed one of my flower beds. He dug up all of my cosmos seedlings. That was not a happy day in the garden.

It takes time to recognize them, but in time you will learn to see the good volunteers from the weeds.