Volunteers

Every year in Dad's garden he would have "volunteers" come up. He was the first person I ever heard refer to self seeded plants as volunteers. I've since heard just about every gardener use that term.  When I was young I thought that he was so clever for coming up with that......but maybe it's been around a while. In my mind anyway, he gets full credit. Up above is a lettuce volunteer next to some scallions.  We didn't plant any lettuce seeds at all so these are seeds that dropped from the last garden and germinated by themselves.

Here is a tomato plant that volunteered to sprout on it's own. I'm quick to pluck these guys out though because I read that the fruit is not great from a tomato that's come up like this. Not sure if there's any truth to that, but since space is an issue in my little raised beds, it had to go.

More lettuce of  a different variety. These I'll let grow because they happened to come up in an area that's not a space issue.