Volunteers You Can Count On

[flowerbug]

...
They are really quite good with even DW liking them. And, she doesn't really care for beets .

yay! once in a while you get a little wood on the ball! progress...

 

[Zeedman]

Just a couple updates.

The apparently hybrid volunteer strawberries really are everbearing; they are still bearing, even now. In fact, these are some of the best berries all year:

As you can see, the seeds detach easily... I try to shake some loose in the garden or yard before I eat them. They are little red hand mines. Imagine if we could breed big strawberries whose seeds just fell off.

I've been closely watching the the volunteer ?ground cherry? in the garden (since I am apparently unable to kill it ). I hoped to further define its identity, beyond its appearance as part of the genus Physalis. Very short, spreading plants - with special emphasis on spreading, which they do incredibly well. The very small berries inside the husks don't appear to ripen very rapidly though, and do not appear worth cultivating (or tolerating). They remind me of the time I mistakenly planted Chinese Lantern in one of DW's flower gardens... it spread so quickly that it took 3 years for us to completely eliminate it.

If this pops up in your garden, kill on sight before it spreads. Think of it as more of a disease than a plant, and treat it appropriately. It was apparently brought to my fence line by birds... I can't imagine what they see in it.

 

[digitS']

The Porters:


They ripened! Pretty good for an 80 day variety. Adapted to Texas climate, the seed companies tell us. I suppose that there are parts of Texas like here.

They always do well and I have grown them for about 30 years. Buuttt, that is starting them indoors about 3/1, up-potting and finally setting them outdoors 3 months later.

I don't remember a Porters volunteer ever ripening before. There were 2 other volunteers in the squash patch – one had flowers, the other a few, hard and tiny tomatoes. A cherry descendant, no doubt. I say "were" because I ran over them yesterday with first the lawnmower and then the rototiller. Porters was saved and dodged around with the machines. I even brought it some water in a bucket .

Steve

 

[Phaedra]

I've got two volunteer chili plants!

 

[Zeedman]

Last week, with strong winds forecast, I drove out to the rural garden to see if the hay mulch on the garlic was still firmly in place (it was). While there, I collected some pods from the volunteer Martynia. One of its common names is "devil's claw" - for good reason. The ripe seed pods shed their soft skin as they dry, revealing a very tough inner core. As the inner core dries, the long thin portion splits into two curved claws with sharp tips, that then twist inward toward each other. The claws are meant to cling tightly to the feet of any large animal which steps between them, with the hapless animal then spreading seed as it walks.


Proboscidea parviflora "Paiute". The 1st photo shows the outer skin sloughing off; the 2nd shows the completely dry pod & seed to scale.

The dry pods are very useful as ornaments; I've seen them painted to resemble tropical birds. But those ends are VERY sharp (almost like thorns) presumably to prevent animals from shaking them off easily. Those pods are incredibly tough too, even my tractor tiller won't break them. The seeds survive our freezing winters, volunteer the next year, and bloom 30 days after germination... so this native of the US desert Southwest would likely succeed well into much of lower Canada.

 

[flowerbug]

... The seeds survive our freezing winters, volunteer the next year, and bloom 30 days after germination... so this native of the US desert Southwest would likely succeed well into much of lower Canada.

that is a crazy interesting pod and story.

if this is capable of travelling by beasties i'm surprised it hasn't already taken over the country. except it seems that they may not germinate in places with tree cover or just never were taken north because the creatures of the dessert south have no migration pathway which took them north like that... (nor east)...

 

[Branching Out]

While weeding one of the beds in the vegetable garden I noticed over a dozen petunia volunteers-- or at least I think they are petunias. I relocated them along the shady side of the bed for now, so I can follow their progress. There is also one lonely Salpiglossis that has popped up nearby. I keep pinching it, and now it looks ready to bloom.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

Chinese lanterns ‘Physalis alktkengi A vigorous spreading hurbaecous perennial . I grew for many years and they are prized for dried floral arrangements. Let them dry & skeletonize and you have an open lantern effect pod with a red seed hanging in the center.
Used a lot for holiday swags too. Just a differnt point of view.

 

[digitS']

Well, I don't know if those are petunias either, @Branching Out . They certainly can volunteer here and I have saved one that was growing with the potatoes – I'm proud to say , I harvested the potatoes and managed to save the petunia ... at least, I hope that there are no longer potatoes, around and under it ... I will post a picture of the little guy but it's flat on the ground from the sprinkler water right now.

Salpiglossis? Apparently, not many folks know about those pretty flowers. I had read that they grew okay in the shade and grew them one year. They did just fine . Kind of a good choice if petunias do well in sun to have salpiglossis in the shade but, one has to be close to them to see the difference.

@Shades-of-Oregon , I planted a few Chinese lanterns in the flower part of the big veggie garden 1 year and then converted that to veggies. I dang near couldn't get the things to stop showing up! They had migrated out of a bed and into a path. I usually leave the weeding of paths to the tiller and it couldn't stop them, for about 3 years. Dumb me should have brought them home for a perennial bed instead of just tilling over them until they finally disappeared.

Steve

 

[digitS']

The petunia in the potato patch is still recovering from the sprinkling but this is cute and, scattered all over the yard this year, maybe I “can count on them” for ‘25.