zxcvbob wrote:
For me, it's the johnny jump-ups trying to take over my vegetable
garden. I pull up a few that are unavoidably in the way, but mostly I
work around them -- at least until they've set seeds for next year.

When I first moved up here I thought violets were cute. I even dug a
few up from the lawn and put them in the flower beds! Little did I
realize how evil they are. Now I can't get rid of them.

Bob

A "volunteer" plant is merely a weed that is interesting.

I had a fig tree volunteer in my back yard. I tended it for several
years, but it never had any fruit. I finally had it removed. Then I
fought root suckers from it for about two years.

I found a palm seedling (Washingtonia filifera) in one of my flower
beds. Although I really don't like palms in my landscape, I was curious
as to how it might grow. I dug it up and put it in a flower pot.
Several years later, it's still in its pot on my front walkway.

Once, when I was still trying to have a dichondra lawn in back, I had
the lawn renovated. The soil amendment was contaminated with cinquefoil
(Potentilla neumanniana). I now have cinquefoil in most of by back yard
beds. It seems to cover the bare spots where nothing else will grow and
looks nice year round. Now I'm trying to get it to grow in the parkway
in front, planting cuttings from the back yard.

The number-one weed in my garden are the seedlings from my evergreen ash
(Fraxinus uhdei). See my
http://www.rossde.com/garden/garden_back.html#tree. No, I will NOT
let these grow for a while. A four-inch seedling can have a 10-inch tap
root. The 10-foot sapling (about 1-1/2 inches in diameter) that I
planted 30+ years ago now towers twice the height of my two-story house
and has a trunk almost three feet in diameter (more than nine feet in
circumference). Some of its surface roots are more than three inches in
diameter; some have grown up under my sprinkler lines and cracked them.
I love the shade of The Tree; but no, I certainly would not let these
weeds (its babies) grow for a while.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening pages at http://www.rossde.com/garden/