Do you allow volunteer plants to grow?

Have you ever taken the tops of carrots and sprouted them in a shallow dish of water? They make a pretty plant. In elementary school we sprouted sweet potatoes and had the vines growing all around the room.

Do you eat the leaves of sweet potatoes raw? I never thought to try them.

Yes, although until recently I have had difficulty getting the carrots to stay alive. They seem to be a bit fussier than some of the things I try to grow. Sweet potatoes are my favorite houseplant though and I love the taste of the tender young leaves. I wish they grew faster!

With your ferns the spores probably travelled on the wind, as ferns do not produce blossoms or fruit or seed. The propagate from spore sacs on the backs of the fronds, and those spores are very light and travel in the wind to find welcoming homes, which yours must be. I think my peach tree was a gift left by squirrels, and I often get things growing from my compost, including, one year, a pumpkin that grew up against a fence and had a grid pattern on one side. I have red cedar that come as gifts from birds, and mulberries, as well.

I will e-mail you that squirrel right away, if I can get him out of my brother's Thanksgiving memory book. That is a different story, so I will tell it another time.

I never had anything come from my compost yet. There's always hope, I suppose. Would you send me your squirrel please. I'd love a hazel tree in my garden as it's my birth tree and quite sacred to me. I have had a squirrel on the bird table, but no tree, as yet!

I would love some kind of a water feature.

Sure thing. We plant our hybrid plants in neat rows, and we plan to have certain plants. If a fruit, for instance a tomato stays on the plant, dries or rots or is eaten and the seeds fall into the soil we get a plant that we did not plan on, it comes up on its own, or "volunteers". I tend to let them grow and enjoy the free plant, and see what comes of it. If the original plant had been hybridized, chances are good the volunteer will revert back to earlier stock. Some people regard volunteer plants as weeds and chop them down with their hoes and cultivators. I, on the other hand, have had some wonderful garden memories from volunteers.

Ok, so any plant that comes up that you didn't specifically plant there is a volunteer? A critter carting off and replanting a bulb, birds leaving seeds - would they be volunteers? I garden on a very small scale so if something came up and was doing ok, I'd let it go (or maybe transplant if I thought it could do better elsewhere). Free food (or flowers) is always a good thing!

You have the whole picture in a nutshell. So do the squirrels, and that is where lots of volunteer black walnut trees and oak trees come from around here. Any garden is much better than none at all. Mine is basically wild and woolly.