Baby Garden Treasures

While out in the garden pulling all those spring weeds, keep an eye out for baby treasures. Our garden is full of them. These are what I call the self-appointed volunteers in the garden that really liked it enough last year to drop seeds to make babies for this year. It’s one of the reasons I’m not quite so fast to get out in the garden and neaten it up. I want to give all these little babies time to grow and get big enough so I can see and recognize them.

I have a little bed in the front of my bungalow house that has slowly been turning into what I call a self-appointed garden. I love getting down and starting to work on it, always keeping an eye out for treasures. Just last week I found some marigold seedlings where the Giant Marigolds grew last year—bonus! I don’t have to replant.  This bed has some of the Foxglove (pictured below)given to me over 12 years ago by Steve’s Aunt Osie from her garden. Each year it pops up near its location from the previous year. I love it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is a volunteered plant of Ammi, Green Mist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are also some beautiful sunflowers that reseed along with some of the zinnias. With zinnias typically it is only one or two colors that will reseed- the other colors are not quite hardy enough. The sunflowers are the best! We get some real beauties that the birds adore later in the season for the seed. You will find that these volunteers are a bit slower to get started and bloom, so we also replant most from seed we started indoors.

Another really fun volunteer is Rudbeckia Indian Summer, better known as the Black-Eyed Susan. This variety has a huge bloom and is not as pushy as others natives, in fact I call it the polite reseeder.

A couple of these self-appointed beauties are so plentiful that I could skip the need to replant ever again!  Those that are more than generous than others are Love-in-a-Mist, Bupleurum, and some of the Queen Anne’s Lace look alike flowers.  We don’t bellyache about all the free little seedlings, we just decide if we like their self-chosen spot and if not run a hoe through the patch to eliminate them.

So keep your eyes open for baby treasures right in your own backyard. While they are small, it is easy to transplant them to other locations in the garden.