Had some leftover dirt in a bag from planting a tree. It was in the shed for weeks. Opened the shed the other day and saw something growing out of it. It found an opening in the bag. The small window in the shed door provided some light. Life finds a way!
Too bad fruit trees don’t grow spontaneous all over like this. Or maybe it is a good thing, don’t know.
What do you think?
Would it be a good thing if fruit trees grew all over the place by nature?
I dunno. Sometimes it crosses my mind to turn the goats out on the Huckleberries out back…lol…Be nice if they were not so bland.
They do. Results are mixed. Many, many feral apples here in New England. Most are not great around where I live, but in parts of Maine it seems like 3 out of 4 feral trees are worth eating, if not propagating. I’ve seen feral apricots in Kansas. Sweet cherry and sour cherry are naturalized in the Mid-Atlantic; they would come up in our hedgerow and produce small but tasty cherries. A few hundred years ago, peach trees would spring up like weeds in the US until what we now call peach borers evolved to be able to eat the trees. Here in town there are mulberries all over the place. All across the Midwest and South, persimmons just come up in any open site that’s left undisturbed long enough.
I could go on for quite a while, but the point is they certainly do just come up on their own. Whether that’s good or not depends on the situation and your point of view.
Wild fruit is insipid and endemic here if you just look for it. Plums, paw paws, persimmions and grapes and berries are staggering.
It is fun finding the tastiest though. We have one patch of Fox grapes that are unusually sweet and people want them more then some cultivated thick skin grapes.
Then fruit trees would be weeds
In this part of Slovakia (wet, temperate with relatively mild winters - very different from the higher mountains of my childhood home) we’d one day wake up in fruit and ash jungle, if we’d keep all volunteers. We get plenty of sweet & sour cherries and crosses (some better than what you get in nurseries, but who cares since nobody can really pick a whole older cherry tree or three…). We have a tasting now and then and divide them into interesting and firewood. Also hazels and walnuts. Apples and pears make for vigorous rootstock, but would likely be good for cooking/drying/distilling and quinces either get a chance to fruit, serve as pear rootstock or get mowed. Peaches we mostly keep - friends beg for both the plants and fruit. Prunes are small but get a chance unless they are in a very wrong place since the flavour is great. Grape volunteers are good starling decoy. I don’t even want to get into strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,and gooseberries that crawl around and I’ve even found currant seedlings this spring.
Couple years ago.I even found an apple seedling growing from a foot rug in my old car - just forgot to close the window before a storm and our dog provided the seed… 
Wild apple trees are fairly common where i live in Michigan, mostly planted, I assume by the deer. Most of the fruit is soft and mushy and not worth eating, but occasionally you will find an exceptional one.
Not around here. Just some abandoned fruit threes here or there.
You are lucky!
