Volunteers

I have a soft spot for volunteers:  Peace Corps Volunteers, public radio station volunteers, Back Country Horsemen Volunteers, therapeutic riding volunteers…  These are a tiny subset of a very large group of people I admire.  But the volunteers I see most in the spring are in my garden.  I wish it was a garden full of people pulling weeds, but instead it is a troop of volunteer plants coming up from the last year.

I believe in the messy approach to gardens, and to life in general.  In part because I actually like the busy mixed-up look, and in part because I am basically lazy.   My garden rows are crooked.  My plantings might be a row, or they might be a block.  But some plants love it here, and they come back year after year.

So far, this cool slow spring I have found two potato plants.  I weeded a clear spot around them and marked them with bricks, so I don’t run them over with the wheelbarrow full of weeds.  There is also a large crop of sunflowers coming up near the green house.  I never had much luck with sunflowers, until a chipmunk moved in and started stashing the bird feeder sunflowers throughout the garden.  For the last three years we have had large healthy yellow flowers with no effort at all.  Thanks chipmunks!

Yesterday I was pulling up some of the giant weeds that are starting to flower even before our garden is fully planted.  Amidst the jungle of weeds I found some cilantro.  That is another plant that continues to come up on its own.  I never buy cilantro seeds.

Some kale overwintered and it is now going to seed.  I may take that seed and replant it.  The same thing often happens with onions I miss during harvest.   We may yet get Swiss chard volunteers, and perhaps some squash volunteers.  I vow to pull up the squash volunteers promptly because you never know what they will produce.  The hybrids between summer and winter squash often result in some strange spongy gourds that don’t look quite edible.  I know this.

My next step for the garden will be to finish cleaning up the weeds, and finally finish planting what we want where we want it.  It will be a moderately messy disarray, of course.  Some of that mess will undoubtedly result in next year’s volunteer surprises.  Anything to save me some work.  Thank you to all the volunteers out there!