Greengirls » Blog Archive » Oh! Oh! Pick me!

Oh! Oh! Pick me!

Posted on June 6th, 2007 – 8:38 AM
By Jaime Chismar

Last week, Tracy at Timberglade wrote a great post about volunteers — you know, plants that appear in your yard uninvited. Thistle, dandelion, creeping charlie, some volunteers make horrible guest, but other volunteers can be keepers if they mind their manners.

Here are a few uninvited guests turned welcomed additions in our yard:

	Wood Sorrel As a kid, I was fascinated by wood sorrel’s teeny tiny yellow flowers. I’d pick little bouquets for my My Little Ponies. It’s edible for ponies and people alike, so I’m happy to keep a plant or two in the garden.
	Clover (any variety) Bees really like it, so we leave patches of it in our lawn. And again, it has a goofy connection to my childhood — My friend Shiloh and I would dissect the blossoms and try to suck the nectar out of the petals.
	Catnip! This herb popped up between our ferns. With four cats, it sure comes in handy. Mr. Puff freaks when we rub it on his scratching post — Meeeee-ow!

(I must admit, Tracy has more photogenic volunteers in her yard than I do. Wild geranium, wild columbine and dame’s rocket, is it possible to have volunteer plant envy?)

So, what uninvited guests do you keep in your garden?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:38 am and is filed under Flowers + Grasses, Weeds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

17 Responses to "Oh! Oh! Pick me!"

Judybusy says:

June 6th, 2007 at 10:31 am

I love volunteers–they add a little chaos. Our absolute favorite is a poppy I planted the first year I began my current garden 12 years ago: Papaver spicatum. The flowers are apricot-colored and wave on wiry stems 12-14″ above an evergreen rosette. A couple years ago, they all died over the winter(they’re perennials) and we just panicked–I even started searching for seeds online. But, many came up as volunteers and now we’re as flush as ever.

Anthony says:

June 6th, 2007 at 10:54 am

We have more clover than we have lawn and I’m happy about it. The clover stays green even without watering it and it holds up better to the foot traffic of my two kids. The clover is also great for attracting fireflies. During summer we have nightly viewings of their group launching. At around dusk, they seem to wake up and take off all at once.

Jaime Chismar says:

June 6th, 2007 at 10:57 am

Clover is impressively hardy. We mow it one day and have flowers the next. I am very excited to learn that fireflies like it, too (beautiful imagery, Anthony). It’s just one more reason to keep it in our lawn!

Hey Judy — Is this your papaver spicatum? It is lovely…

MicheleStM says:

June 6th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

We have volunteer hydrangea, which I like so much that we transplanted it from our (shady) backyard to our (sunny) front (about half of it survived).

And we just got 12 new bleeding hearts that were volunteers in someone else’s yard.

Volunteers can be great.

Michele

Connie Nelson says:

June 6th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

I love volunteers. In fact, my grass if full of them. Clover, wood sorrel, plantain, creeping Charlie … anything that’s green gets to stay in the lawn. I’m a little more discerning in the garden. I only allow weeds that look like flowers to hang around.

I do have a clandestine love for leafy spurge. That bright green color looks great in bouquets. Anyone out there growing it — on purpose?

poverty says:

June 6th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

I wish we had volunteer catnip! I planted some in a pot indoors this spring, and transplanted it into the rock garden when I thought it was strong enough…it’s still alive, but my two cats and the neighbor’s have done a number on it.

We have lots of volunteer bluebells, and some poppies that I was pulling as weeds until someone pointed out that they were poppies. My garden buddy, Evil Cat, found two little volunteer rosebushes that we put in a pot and are doing very well.

laura says:

June 6th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

i had two volunteer tomato plants sprout up in odd places in my garden. i was confused as to how that happened until i remembered i got lazy and left rotted tomatoes in the garden bed at the end of last year. they are very small, and i’m not sure they’ll be productive.

as for volunteers i pull, i’ve found prostrate spurge, carpetweed, wood sorrel, white clover, purslane, leafy spurge (gave me hives when i pulled it all up by hand), and some kind of thistle along with the normal crabgrass, foxtails, and dandelions. i do like the prostrate spurge in my garden as it chokes out other weeds and makes good ground cover.

Liz says:

June 6th, 2007 at 5:17 pm

I have volunteer Cherry Tomatoes, dill, columbine, morning glories, sunflowers, watermelons, lots of native wildflowers and much more. I like to leave things in the fall and then let things grow in the spring and then I get to share the ones that I don’t need.

Judybusy says:

June 7th, 2007 at 11:14 am

Jaime,
Yes, that’s my poppy, but that bloom is a bit old and the color is more intense when they first open up.

Peter Hoh says:

June 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

That looks like a brand new poppy blossom to me, as you can still see the fold marks. However, capturing the color of a poppy on film (or in a digital camera) is very tricky. Only a few of my photographs came close to replicating the color I saw.

Tracy says:

June 7th, 2007 at 7:11 pm

Jaime: I just talked about my “nice” volunteers in my post - I like your “full disclosure” much better. But then, if I took pictures of all the volunteers in my yard and garden, it would be the post that never ended. There would be purslane, and dandelion, and plantain, and burdock, and Canada thistle, and buckthorn, and, and, and . . .

Jaime Chismar says:

June 8th, 2007 at 10:01 am

Argh! buck-freaking-thorn is evil! We’ve been trying for two years to get rid of the volunteers under pine trees. It’s almost as bad as our volunteer Chinese elm trees.

Heather says:

June 8th, 2007 at 10:47 am

Ugh, buckthorn. I just took out a 20-year canopy last year from the backyard, but the stumps are all regrowing along with new seedlings. I was recently told that the only way to kill it is a mixture of 2 parts roundup concentrate & 1 part diesel fuel. Has anyone tried this? Or anything else that works?

Tracy says:

June 8th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

Heather - I hope that’s not true! I would *for sure* stay away from using any type of fuel, as that would be terrible from an environmental standpoint, and it could potentially kill the area for anything else to grow until the soil can somehow regenerate itself.

Round-up will probably work, but a product called Vine-X is better. Vine-X works for more mature buckthorn trees/shrubs. It comes in a bottle with a nozzle, so you can apply it along an 8-12″ length of trunk, like deoderant. (Okay, maybe a less-weird analogy would be a glue stick.) Since you apply it directly to the plant/tree in question, you won’t accidentally kill surrounding plants like you can if the spray from Round-Up blows in the wind. Plus, I think Vine-X is stronger than Round-Up.

The best solution is digging up the stumps, which is 100% effective if you get the roots. Buckthorn has a pretty shallow and short root system, so it’s actually not too difficult to dig out.

Heather says:

June 9th, 2007 at 12:27 am

Thanks Tracy! I really didn’t want to use fuel. I made a strong batch of roundup from the concentrated stuff last fall, and that didn’t kill the plants. I will give Vine-X a try. That sounds much better for working in the area of my new replacement plantings!

Tracy says:

June 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Good luck, Heather - I hope it works!

heirloom bedspreads says:

August 21st, 2007 at 1:53 am

Where I see gallery?