For starters, I’m afraid that I’m going to botch some names here. Gardening OCD-namers, get out your reading glasses and notebooks. I almost wish that we allowed comments because I would love to be set straight on this matter…but, as it is, we amateurs will have to consult a book to be set right.
So, what’s the to-do anyway? Today I simply want to share one of the little joys found in my garden: volunteer plants of the pansy family. I’m afraid I’ll mislead you with my misapplication of names. We have basic pansies, and then there are violas and johnny-jump-ups. In fact, Johnny-jump-ups may be simply a type of viola. Anyway, that’s my disclaimer.
Some Original Plants
When I first began to garden, I depended on plant stores for already-grown pansies (and family). In recent years, I have begun to experiment with seed ordered from catalogs and sown late in the summer for Fall and Winter blooms. There are benefits to both methods. Here are a few pictures of my home-grown violas. I love that these two patches happen to be in the same place in my garden, just in different years. Honestly, I try to heavily plant this angle of my garden which faces my front porch. That way, we end up with a joyous crowd of smiling violas in the Spring.
Second Generation
It was in my first year in our dear little cottage, that I discovered the profligacy of the viola. I had planted several viola plants along a grassy yard and soon began to find baby violas springing up in the grass. Some of the plants made it to full-grown dimensions of 6″ by 12″ but others only grew to an inch tall. I especially loved the teeny-tiny plants with little flowers the size of my fingertip. One could walk over those flowers without noticing their existence, or one could stoop downwards and spot many a tiny viola hidden in the grass or rocky driveway.
Every year now a second, maybe even third, generation pops up here and there throughout the other plants. I love not only the surprise of where the violas will reseed, but also the colors of each plant. It seems that many store-bought varieties don’t produce the same color of flowers in the second and third generation. The standard Johnny-jump-up with dark purple and yellow petals breeds true and always makes its presence known the garden. The other varieties are more surprising in their outcome. Here’s a gallery of pictures collected in late May. I don’t think I sowed any of these seeds.
Allowing Voluntary Reseeding
I really don’t spend time reseeding my garden with these little treasures, so there’s not much point in my offering advice in this regard. But, why not? Perhaps there’s a nugget or two which may help. First, pansies, the big floppy flowers sold in stores, do not reseed for me. I have seen pansy seed for sale, so it must be doable, but apparently not from seed dropped by last year’s flowers. If you want volunteer flowers, plant violas or johnny-jump-ups. Second, allow some of the flowers to go to seed. Violas produce more flowers over a given season if you deadhead them as the blooms wilt and before seedheads are formed. If you want to proliferate your plants, allow a few flowers to fully die and drop seed. Frankly, try as I may to deadhead all my violas, I never get around to pinching them all. It is very hard to prevent your violas from dropping some seed.
Thirdly, learn to recognize the viola leaves as they emerge in the spring. Many, many plants will try to stake a claim in your garden plot. Most of them will be weeds. It’s easier to learn the leaves of your few friends, rather than those of every weed which will show its face.
Fourthly, if you struggle with killing any flowering plant in your garden…that’s me, too. You can pull up some of these little volunteers if you don’t like their placement. It’s really ok. You are the gardener. 🙂
Lastly: Unvoluntary Reseeding
If you want to be a little more selective in the placement, harvest some browned seeds from some of your plants. Place them in an envelope and save them for starting in the late summer. Here in middle Georgia, I start them in little seed pods come August.
An important note. Volunteer violas do not provide masses of springtime color. Only the violas which I plant in the Fall have time to grow to their full maturity. The volunteers are almost always tiny and just an added perk to the spring garden. In this light, you might want to gather seeds from your dying spring violas and begin them yourself in August. Something about that controlled temperature in the summer heat. Enjoy!
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