I am not
talking about people who suddenly appear on your doorstep. I am talking about the surprises you will
from time to time find in your vegie garden if you allow small weeds to live long
enough to see what they are. Some call
them ‘volunteers’. I call them ‘spontaneous
arrivals’.
The most common spontaneous arrivals in vegie
gardens are probably Parsley and Silverbeet.
If you allow these plants to flower and then go to seed and don’t pull
them out until the start of winter, it is very likely you will have them
germinate in various spots in your vegie patch the following season. I saves you buying the seed and putting them
in, but there is another reason to treasure these plants: they may well do
better than seedlings bought in a nursery because transplanting from a pot, no
matter how well done, means the plant’s efforts are at first focused on
survival, not growth.
Tomatoes are a prime example. I have seen cases where a tiny tomato
seedling spontaneously appearing above ground in late December produced tomatoes
well before some of the carefully nurtured seedlings bought a couple of months
earlier. Why is this? Because it was allowed to germinate and grow
in the one spot, without any interruptions and without all the disadvantages of
being in a pot first.
A few months ago a grape (see photo) spontaneously
arrived in my garden. I could easily not
have recognized it for what it was and pulled it out. The vine has grown vigorously and I have built
a support for it now.
Pumpkins seedlings, not broken down by your
compost heap, can be another great gift.
The pumpkin shown in the sidebar of this blog was a spontaneous arrival
in my garden.
You can maximize the chances of this happening by making your own compost. My compost is mostly nice black soil when it
is ready, but still has the occasional seed in it. One year I had an incredible number of tomato
seedlings spontaneously coming up. I
left them to fend for themselves and they produced a wonderful crop of tomatoes.
Determining what a weed is, before deciding
whether to pull it out, is the key to success.
I put a little stick next to weeds I am uncertain about.
Of course not every self-sown seed will
bring success. The plant may not produce,
or if it does, its fruit may not taste right, because it may be a cross between
varieties. Well, you can pull it out
when that is clear.
Self-sown seeds can be presents worth
treasuring. Welcome these spontaneous
arrivals!
