"Volunteer" Edibles 2013

Last year, I harvested "volunteer" tomatoes and potatoes - ones which popped up of their own accord with no decision making/planning/planting from me.

This year, I have 'volunteer' ... strawberries!!

It was a plant I asked for an ID of a few weeks ago and Victoria was first to suggest it was a strawberry plant. Have to be honest, I was a bit sceptical (sorry V ): but, look now ...



... and with a promise of more to come ....



I've just halved that first one so Mr 'M' and I could have a taste and the verdict is: very sweet and juicy. Albeit the fruits are very small, they are a bonus crop

Now, I've lived here 3yrs and I know that little patch very well because it is next to the patio door step. For whatever reason, this year that patch has flourished, but I have never seen this strawberry plant there in previous years. I do have a couple of strawberry plants, but they are in another part of the garden and, while one is doing well, the other is focussed on growing and not fruiting. I don't think this little lady has anything to do with the two plants I already have. She just simply appeared and decided to stay.

So, what "volunteer" edibles have chosen you?

 

Looks like an Alpine Strawberry. Willow said she saw Mr Blackbird having it away with some of ours so its probably come from a bird dropping. They spread like butter in Zig's kitchen on a hot day.

 

FUNtastic!! Next year should be a bumper harvest then

(Off to Google Alpine Strawberries)

 

Mine look like Alpine strawberries but when purchased a couple of years ago were 'normal' size. T'other half picked two yesterday and like yours "M" they were tiny and sweet.

We have a self-seeded Almond tree now 3 meters tall which fruited this year ... it is a baby of our ancient Almond tree which must be 10 meters tall so we now have one each side of our entrance gates and they should meet in the middle to make an arch this next year
.

 

Now that will be a wonderful sight to see! I'll be scouring the pages looking for pix next year Victoria.

 

Are alpine strawberries the same thing as wild strawberries? Wild strawbs are super sweet but tiny. Personally, having tasted some, I'm no longer that bothered about cultivated ones, and I've just released one wild one into open ground to do its thing.

As for cultivated ones, here's something I've learned just recently. My dad told me ages ago that after a while, cultivated types slowly revert to the wild ones. I laughed, and told him that's only if they grow from seed, and any that grow from runners are genetically identical to the parent. Well some of his strawbs have been producing smaller, sweeter fruit this year, so maybe he's right and I'm wrong.

 

No, the native wild strawberry is different to the alpine one. Like you say, tiny rounded berries, juicier too.

Shouldn't revert without growing from seed, maybe they've just used up certain nutrients?

 

Finally found my old camera, had to re format the card but its working fine now

Heres some that grew from a couple of plants last year.

 

Nice patch, Zigs

 

I avoid allowing Potatoes to volunteer (rogue them out if they do) with a vengeance If you get blight and you have volunteers in several/all of your crop rotation areas you're likely to be snookered to grow spuds in the following year.

I'm equally brutal with anything in the Onion family, as white rot is hard to get rid of, and one patch infected is much "less bad" than several.

Can't think of anything else that I rogue out as keenly though.

 

Never gave that a thought, Kristen; thanks for the heads-up

 

I know raspberries become virus infected after a few years and produce smaller fruit, I just wonder if the same happens with strawberries.
Went in Waitroses today and saw the largest strawberries, they were massive and only £2 a punnet.

Didn't buy any, not really into strawberries.

 

Every year I find various squash/pumpkin seedlings popping up around the vegetable patch, these are a result of the discarded pulp etc from last year's fruit which ends up in the compost heap.

I usually try to leave one to grow on, a plant which isn't threatening to swamp all the other vegetables nearby if possible.

This year I've selected a plant which popped up at the end of the runner bean trench and is steadily advancing towards the sweet potato patch and which is of course growing at twice the rate of the ones I carefully propagated, planted out and tended.

It's always interesting to see what kind of fruit these rogue plants produce at the end of the season, as I grow courgettes, squashes and pumpkins each year and often end up with some odd shaped hybrids.

I think my best volunteer edible though, has to be the walnut seedling which appeared in the veg patch a few years ago, presumably from a nut buried by a squirrel. I carefully potted it up, grew it on for a year and then planted it in the chicken run, where it has flourished and has been producing nuts for the past three years now.

 

What about ornamental alliums, and chives for that matter. All related to onions, but typically they stay put for years.

 

When I worked in the Tissue Culture lab (which specialised in virus-free plant propagation) they raised strawberries (amongst other crops - mostly cut flowers). Freed of virus the Strawberries were massive, and retained their great taste They did a roaring trade in repeat-business, so I guess the plants were re-infected within a few years in-the-field

Stay put is fine. Volunteers in every bed on your plot means that if you get infected then all plants, in all plots, are effected, so you have no plot which is clean (hence why I rogue out the volunteers promptly). There is a school of thought that you should not rotate crops until you have a problem, so grow Onions, say, in the same place until infected then plant the next crop in fresh soil. I've always thought that that approach ignored the varying nutrient requirements of crops, and moving them round meant that the soil had time to recover / replenish a particular crop's required micro-nutrients, whereas mono-cropping, like farmers do, means that you have to provide everything the crop needs (and the soil just becomes the substrate for physical support!)