Volunteers are welcome strangers in my yard

By Sheila Cubick

OSU Extension master gardener volunteer

Walking through my yard last fall I saw some strangers I hadn’t known were living in my yard.

Once spying them, I greeted them with joy. They were garden volunteers.

Beside my driveway turnaround and in my woodpile, lived a red impatien. Its parents were probably residents of my maple flower bed just downhill from where she was living in between two decaying logs. A few days later, I found snapdragons flanking my garage doors, one on either side of the door. They were living between the paving stone and the garage wall toward the concrete lip of the floor. Later still, I found tomatoes living in and around my wire-fence compost bin.

Volunteer plants are usually the happiest plants in my garden. They want to live there. They thrive right where they are without any help or assistance from me. These seeds have landed and grown in conditions that work nicely for them to survive and thrive.

How many volunteers do I cut down before I’m aware of who or what they are? Probably quite a few. It takes a while for the leaves to be distinguishable from the wild plants and grasses growing among them.

Sometimes in the spring as I begin the process of weeding the new season’s beginning growth of unwanted plants or “weeds,” I sometimes pull a young plant that I recognize afterward from the shape of familiar leaves. I then realize that I have several volunteers in my bed. Quite often, these are impatiens and alyssum.

Depending on your location, you need to keep an eye out for sunflowers, marigolds, cleome, bachelor’s buttons, balsam, calendula and others. If you’ve had these in your garden it is likely that these reseeding annuals will return. Many wildflowers are reseeding or self-seeding. Be careful, though. Some reseeding annuals can take over before you know it.

Become aware of the shape of the leaves of the annuals you often plant in your flowerbeds. Seeds from last year’s plants may have dropped in the bed or nearby. Look before you pull and you may have welcome friends throughout the summer.

For more information visit http://go.osu.edu/selfseedingperennials and http://go.osu.edu/growingannuals.