cucumber plants growing in places I did not plant them.

[nancygene]

I have several plants that appear to be cucumber plants that are growing where I did not plant them this year. At first, I thought maybe a couple came up from last year because we rotated our garden and they just popped up in sporadic places where we had them planted last year. I am wondering if this is even possible? I did not think they would regrow. The plants have small yellow flowers on them and the leaves certainly look like cucumbers. Is there another plant that could be there that so closely resembles cucumbers?

[nedwina]

Yep, it's very possible.

Assorted squash & pumpkins can look like cukes too.

I frequently get "volunteers" where I leave the pumpkins to rot by the mailbox. It was a really mild winter, so I have quite a few this time around.

Also I've found that seed can survive being in the compost pile (long after the fruit has rotted away) & will germinate when spread in the garden the following year.

[rainbowgardener]

Yeah if you composted any. I get volunteer squash and tomatoes everywhere I put compost down. The squash and tomato seeds seem to survive composting just fine, whereas weeds and other veggies seeds don't.

If you don't compost, other options would be if any cukes were left behind unseen under the leaves to rot into the ground, or perhaps birds ate some and deposited them for you.

It had to come from a seed somehow....

[ReptileAddiction]

Do the volunteer tomatoes produce good tomatoes?

[hendi_alex]

Volunteer tomato plants make perfectly fine tomatoes. However, if the parent plant was a hybrid, the offspring will generally revert to one parent or the other, or will perhaps represent a cross from a nearby plant. I often let a couple of these plants mature, just to see what kind of tomato gets produced.

[ReptileAddiction]

That would be neat having random varieties pop up. Well not random but you get what I'm saying I am assuming.

[Francis Barnswallow]

I had this happen to me when I noticed pepper and zucs plants growing near the shore of the lake behind my house.

On further inspection I then noticed a game trail next to where they were growing that pretty much proved my suspicions that animals were stealing and eating my veggies. Where's an alligator when you need one?

[nancygene]

The funny part is that those random cukes already have flowers on them and the ones I actually did plant in another location of the garden do not. But, I did not get the planted ones into the ground until late in the season so I am sure that is the reason for that. I am just letting the random cukes do their thing. I will have enough cukes to feed the entire neighborhood, I think...lol...

[PunkRotten]

I got a tomato and like 4 cucumber/melon/squash volunteers. I am leaving them all to see what I get. They are growing pretty healthy too. I am pretty sure these all came from store bought fruit that I composted.