Hi everyone,
Last year I planted lettuce which I never harvested, and it looks to me like it's back this year - a lot of it. Is this even possible? I'm in zone 3-4.

I also have a mystery plant coming up right in between coral bells and columbine. I ended up moving a coral bell this morning to make room for this mystery plant. I planted a poppy there 6 years ago and it never survived. Could this be my poppy? Or perhaps it's blanket flower - that hasn't been in my garden for a couple years either, though. I'll have to research this further.

Last week I didn't see any signs of my balloonflowers, but this morning, after 2 days of rain, there they were! Yay!

I'd love to hear about surprises in your gardens. :)

me and my mom were burying old vegetables just to fetilize the plants, and somehow we have a whole cabbage growing in our yard now. im pretty sure cabbage isnt supposed to grow in the desert.

me and my mom were burying old vegetables just to fetilize the plants, and somehow we have a whole cabbage growing in our yard now. im pretty sure cabbage isnt supposed to grow in the desert.
Haha! That's awesome!

I'm happy with just about every volunteer plant that comes up. This year we have a gazillion native sunflowers, which will provide much-needed light shade and plenty of bird food (lesser goldfinches love them).

I have annuals that would come back the following year. Not that it doesn't happen, but it sure is a nice surprise for me to see them pop up in places I never expected. I guess the birdies did the seed spreading to thank me for feeding them everyday!!! Nature is such a wonderful thing.
So, the lesson I learned is that I don't just go around pulling what I think are "weeds". I wait for them to get bigger so I can identify them before I am sure they are weeds. And I am getting better with recognizing the different leaves.
Also, as I deadhead the pansies, I throw them in a corner. I usually get some to reseed and get pansies the following year. I guess depending on the hybrid you have and whether they will reseed.
SallyK - poppies have leaves that look hairy. If the one showing up in your garden is like that, then they could be poppies.
Happy Gardening to all.

I have something comming up that I have no idea what it is.
I did manage to ID the mystry plant that has been growing the last couple months as a pumpkin vine, er..I have never planted pumpkins so it must have made its way out of the compost heap.

There is also somesort of vine growing out of the bottumof the compost heap, no idea what it is.
Seems the sweet potatos that I did not harvest last year have come back also.

me and my mom were burying old vegetables just to fetilize the plants, and somehow we have a whole cabbage growing in our yard now. im pretty sure cabbage isnt supposed to grow in the desert.

If it's getting water, it will grow.

Ha ha...my mom and nana let their backyard go to ****e after I moved away. When I recently went to visit around last years halloween I found that they had pumpkins hanging from their pine trees!

My mom had forgotten she had thrown the old carved pumkins out last year and they took over the heap.

It was pretty damn funny...

I do not know what you have growing in your garden. I know many times I am amazed and surprised what comes up in my flower beds. Ususally just a WEED my wife tells me. She says to me to pull it. I would rather watch it grow and see what happens.

Many times birds drop their doo.doo in the soli and this is how you get surprises!
Hi everyone,

Last year I planted lettuce which I never harvested, and it looks to me like it's back this year - a lot of it. Is this even possible? I'm in zone 3-4.

I also have a mystery plant coming up right in between coral bells and columbine. I ended up moving a coral bell this morning to make room for this mystery plant. I planted a poppy there 6 years ago and it never survived. Could this be my poppy? Or perhaps it's blanket flower - that hasn't been in my garden for a couple years either, though. I'll have to research this further.

Last week I didn't see any signs of my balloonflowers, but this morning, after 2 days of rain, there they were! Yay!

I'd love to hear about surprises in your gardens. :)

Sally, yes it's extremely possible that your lettuce self-seeded. It's happened to me a few times and I'm in the same climate zone, maybe a bit colder. I also noticed that my annual morning glory vine self seeds every year as well as some tomato plants. If the seeds were deep enough and covered with leaves or other organic debris, it can happen. Enjoy your lettuce!

ETA: about the poppy. I would doubt that it's the poppy since it's been so many years but hey, nature does what it wants.

I googled blanketflower and saw a photo of the leaves - it looks like my mystery plant is indeed my blanketflower making an appearance after 2 or 3 years! How odd!

I have two surprises.

In addition to my yard, I have a small community garden plot. I was given a different plot this year, and there were some onions growing in it. I rescued them, transplanted them into their own row before the rest of the garden got rototilled. I planted a small patch of hard red spring wheat, some dill and basil, and some marigolds too.

The other surprise: Last week I went over there to plant some corn... and saw a big old woodchuck going under the tool shed...

A main reason I'm doing this is because some people on other websites were moaning about how many animals get killed in crop production. I still say veg*nism is far less violent than omnism, but I decided I wanted to develop animal-friendly ways of food production. Now's my chance, I guess...

I've heard that leaving droppings from my cat or my neighbors' dogs near the burrow entrance would make the neighborhood less inviting to Mr/Ms Groundhog. I don't think I want to tell the plot managers about this; I'm not sure what they would do. Killing the beast myself is out of the question, of course... it would defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to do.

Male urine is a deterrant to mammals, so if you can wiz around the plot that will help, or, if public wizzing isn't possible, pee in a jar and then sprinkle around the perimeter.

Urine diluted 10 parts water to one part pee also makes good fertilizer.

Hmmm... I knew urine had fertilizer value, especially nitrogen, but was concerned that it might be too salty, and over time make the soil salty and infertile. (Of course, chemical fertilizers can harm soil that way too...) I had planned on interplanting beans which I had inoculated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria to provide a lot of the nitrogen for my plot.

Anyhow. The garden plot is rather openly visible, although fenced-in. However, I could bring a... sample... in an old plastic jug, and pour it around.

Corn doesn't have edible parts which might possibly come in contact with whatever it was fertilized with. I wouldn't try this on anything like lettuce or root vegetables, though.

(These threads take more turns than a macrame project...):dizzy:

The main drawback of urine is acidity, apparently which can be offset by wood ashes. Unless you eat a high-salt diet, then it might be too salty. Not sure.... This is mainly a problem if you live in an arid area where salts accumulate. In rainy (or normal rainfall) areas, salt isn't usually a problem.

Urine is basically sterile, and if you use it as fertilizer not too soon before harvest, can be safely used on root and leaf crops.

Be sure not to splash undiluted urine on plants, as it can burn them. I even rinse the diluted urine off the leaves, to guard against possible burning.

I'm pretty sure the strange plant near my grape vine is a potato now.
How the heck is a potato growing in my yard? I do not even remeber the last time I bought a potato.

i recently got a pleasant surprise in my yard.last year some guys i've known
for years were asked to cut a hedgerow down to the stumps and they also
cut down an elderberry bush by mistake!this past month,the bush grew back
at an alarmingly fast rate,total recovery!
what won't surprise me is tomatoes growing in the garden.i didn't plant any
and i don't plan to because they grow whether i want them or not.every year
i get the same thing,a bushel basket full of cherry tomatoes.by october,i'm
sick of salads and they end up becoming spaghetti sauce.:hungry:

I have volunteer pumpkin plants, potatoes and sunflowers competing with the weeds in the weed patch that was a garden last year :brood: (I can't afford to have someone deep roto-till compost into it this year, and the soil is WAY too much heavy, dense clay and rocks to hand-till)

I have volunteer pumpkin plants, potatoes and sunflowers competing with the weeds in the weed patch that was a garden last year :brood: (I can't afford to have someone deep roto-till compost into it this year, and the soil is WAY too much heavy, dense clay and rocks to hand-till)
Have you tried puting a soaker hose to it over night before turnign the soil?
I have never used a tiller but the dirt here is very heavy with lots of limestone and clay

Soaker hose, sprinkler, torrential rain... the soil needs so much compost tilled in because of the rocks and clay it isn't time effective to do it by hand even if I COULD lift a shovel-full of the stuff... even the hard-core gardners with the entire day at their disposal still use tillers around here, it's the only thing that works... :/