Volunteer Veggies

Plants that show up on their own in the garden we term volunteers. Tomatoes are the most common and I usually pull them up because parentage is unknown and most likely they will be cherry or some other small tomato. Butternut squash on the other hand, are some of the best volunteers we’ve ever had.

Here is a plant that came up on its own and has 5 huge squash on it, better looking than any of those I actually planted this season. They sprout from seeds in the compost pile and we let them roam because they make good fruits with little effort on our part.

The big surprise this year is this bed of cantaloupes, 3 different varieties which all sprouted in the garlic bed and after I harvested the garlic we just left them to grow on. There are at least 6 fat melons in this bed, I am hopeful that they will be tasty, in years past volunteer melons have been squashy and not very sweet but based on their size and shape I’m hoping these volunteer melons will be sweet and fragrant. Should know very soon as this one is looking close to ripe.

We got another nice rain yesterday, 6/10ths of an inch.  What an incredible difference it makes to the look of the overall landscape for everything to finally get a good drink several days in a row. Despite the humidity it brings, it also gives me hope that things won’t just burn up before August arrives.