Volunteer veggies: a pleasant surprise

I love surprises.

Sometimes my garden produces those surprises by bringing up a volunteer vegetable or flower.

I’m not always that surprised, though. Last year, I did a very poor job of picking green beans. So I have a good crop of volunteers this year. Unfortunately for the beans and their picker, the Three Sisters garden has been moved. No cornstalk poles conveniently await beans to climb them. I’m fated to crawl on hands and knees to harvest most of these. Some of them are climbing the fence I erected for them last year, for which I am grateful.

When the fall holidays were over, we threw our pumpkins and gourds into the garden, hoping that a seed would take root. If memory serves me, we threw the pumpkin on the west side of the garden and the gourds on the east. This plant, on the very eastern edge of the pond garden, is probably a mini white pumpkin. But who knows. I look forward to finding out.

This tomato is a complete surprise. I don’t remember throwing any tomatoes in the garden, but here is a tomato plant. It isn’t very healthy, though, so we’ll see if any fruit appears.

Kenny Point at Veggie Gardening Tips
suggests that gardeners learn what baby leaves look like so we don’t pull out something good. If I hadn't known what baby squash and tomato leaves look like, I would have pulled those gifts from the garde