Volunteer Tomatoes!

[Donnyboy]

Anyone else enjoy growing volunteers?

I used a lot of compost from my compost bin this year to fill my raised beds and containers. The compost was only one year old on top and five or six years old at the bottom of the bin. I immediately began getting a lot of volunteer tomato plants. In past years, I would pull a volunteer in order to plant something I grew to plant. The volunteers were a mixture of regular leaf and potato leaf plants. This year, I decided to grow some of the volunteers and see what resulted from them. I segregated the volunteers by leaf type in beds and containers. I let the volunteers grow undisturbed until I felt they had a significant tap root. I would moisten the soil in order to retain the tap roots when I pulled them. I used a piece of rebar to punch narrow but deep holes for replanting the volunteers. Six to eight weeks later, the volunteers are out performing the preferred varieties in plant size and hanging tomatoes on the vines. I haven't tasted one yet, but if any taste like cardboard, the plants will be pulled and contributed to the compost bin again. The potato leaf plants are exhibiting the most hybrid vigor. I haven't grown an open pollinated, potato leaf plant in many years, so I'm pretty sure they are the hybrid progeny of hybrid plants I grew in years past. It is interesting and fun playing the tomato lottery.

[MissS]

Many years ago, the only tomato that I grew was Brandywine. Every year I would get a few volunteers and just like you, they were always stronger and far ahead of those that I started indoors. As the tomato season progressed and the fruits started to come in the differences were not so very apparent anymore. They both performed well for me. I was tempted to just direct seed my tomatoes and be done with all of the indoor growing but that has not happened, yet.

[stone]

I want my veggies to volunteer... I know those will grow with increased vigour!

I have some everglades tomatoes and spiny cucumbers and brown crowders, cherokee trail of tears beans that are usually reliable self sowers... when the veggies plant themselves, saves work, and I get food, even when I get pulled away from the garden at an inconvenient time.

And... the volunteers usually compete well with whatever else shows up...

[brownrexx]

[mention]Donnyboy[/mention] I noticed the same thing this year at my compost pile. I had several tomato plants growing at the edge of the pile. Usually my volunteers are cherry type but since I had one potato leaf type I kept it and 3 of the other plants. If they turn out to be cherry type I will probably pull them because we can only eat and give away so many cherry tomatoes but I am looking forward to seeing what the potato leaf one turns out like.

Last year I started my tomatoes from seed in the house in March as usual but direct seeded a couple in pots outdoors in June. This worked out well because I had nice young, healthy plants late in the season when my other plants were looking tired and had become diseased.

[slugworth]

2015 was a drought year for me and the volunteers did better than store bought plants.
They went 2 weeks without watering and were still alive when all the other plants croaked.
Possibly german queen or german johnson.
It was the 1st time in my life I had compost pile tomatoes that weren't cherry type.
All the other plants that expired were hybrids.

[pepperhead212]

I don't get many volunteer tomatoes, but I always get large numbers of volunteer tomatillos, and years ago, I would use only the volunteers, as those seedlings were notorious for having weak stems, until I started adding silica. Unfortunately, the tomatillos would get slightly smaller every year, until they were only about an inch in diameter, so I'm back to starting those from seed indoors.

This season, I got a lot of volunteer dill plants, all over the garden. I just left them, in many places, or transplant them to a better spot, if I couldn't leave them where they were.

[slugworth]

I waited until the last minute to rototill,but never saw any volunteers this year in the garden.

[guruofgardens]

We're growing a volunteer tomato that survived our first snow in Sept. 2020. I have no clue what kind it could be as the tomato grew at least 50' from the others. I'm sure it came from the slop we add to the soil in the Fall. We also have 100's of dill plants every year, and this year we have lots of cilantro everywhere.

[eyegrotom]

Here is a bunch of volunteers from my compost pile from last year
I potted them all up and give them away
There was about 50 in that one handfull

[Shule]

I've let a few volunteers here and there grow in the past. I think they can do as well as or better than transplants, if you get them to sprout early enough (rather than only let the late volunteers grow). It's good to water them, even though they'll often live if you don't.

This year, however, I'm letting about 25 volunteers grow. I'm selecting for potato leaf volunteers where possible. This is in part as insurance against getting too many Ovita volunteers, which should be regular leaf. Ovita tasted fantastic when I grew it in a container in 2016, but in the ground with black plastic in 2020, it was totally different.

My earliest volunteer that I let grow was my first tomato to set fruit. It's probably a Galapagos Island tomato (since that's basically the only thing that was growing in the area where it sprouted last year). I think I've got two Purple Calabash volunteers (the plants are pretty unique), and probably some Medovaya Kaplya cross F3 volunteers, among other stuff.

The ones that I suspect are Medovaya Kaplya cross F3s set fruit recently.

Volunteers seem to have a vigor boost. This could be in part because they have an undisturbed taproot, but I also think it might be because the seeds endured winter outside. I have a hypothesis that freezing dry seeds can mimic this effect.

Most of my volunteers are behind my transplants (in plant size), but that may only be because they sprouted later than my transplants probably did. My earliest volunteer, which sprouted fairly early, is pretty big.

I think doing foliar sprays of calcium nitrate helps small/young plants grow considerably faster.

[Donnyboy]

It has been a tough year for my tomato plants in north Texas. A combination of high heat and high humidity has caused foliage fungus to grow better than any plants in my garden. My volunteer plants have withstood the fungus attack better than any of my purposely planted varieties.

[slugworth]

Here is a bunch of volunteers from my compost pile from last year
I potted them all up and give them away
There was about 50 in that one handfull

that looks like one of my indoor seed starts.
I save seeds on a paper plate and plant the entire thing to get the ball rolling.

[GardenGuy00]

I'm a huge fan of volunteers; they're usually so prolific! Usually they're just cherry tomatoes, though a couple years ago I was pleasantly surprised with a volunteer Brandywine plant.

[rxkeith]

i have let a few volunteers go in the past. like others have said, mostly its cherry tomatoes.
galinas was coming up last year, sun gold volunteers came up in the past that gave me a diversity of
small tomatoes. the weather has to be right for volunteers to mature fruit me here. we had frost three
days in a row in late may that would have taken out any volunteers that sprouted. i have not seen any so
far in the garden. if any do come up, it will be too late for them to do anything.


keith

[JRinPA]

I don't usually allow volunteers to grow, but I left one in this year that was well placed. Last year it was all sunsugar F1s there, so I supposed this would be a sunsugar F2. It was initially bigger than the transplants. I'll have to check to see if it still is. While I'm curious how it will compare to the F1, I just hope that it tastes good. I had plenty of starts I could have put there instead. It was an impulsive decision to leave it.

[Donnyboy]

I have only identified Black Cherry as one of the regular leaf volunteers. I grew them for many years and loved the tomatoes. I stopped growing them a few years ago when I grew tired of them dying in mid summer when the high heat arrived. The volunteer plant lasted longer than any I grew in the past, but it died eventually.

My favorite volunteer plant is an unidentified potato leaf plant which has taken over a fence in my pepper/onion bed. It is huge and produces smallish tomatoes in abundance. The tomatoes retain green shoulders even when ripe. It seems totally impervious to the high summer heat and continues growing on the fence and producing abundantly. It is kinda sad that I will probably never identify and grow it again intentionally. I would guess it is a scion of some hybrid I grew in past years.

[JRinPA]

That sunsugar F2 volunteer is roughly the same size as the transplanted sunsugar f1. Probably two weeks to go for a through taste test.

[JRinPA]

The volunteer mentioned above was the first tomato to ripen fruit...probably 5 days back. Call it July 21st. Looks and tastes enough like sunsugar f1, though the truss seemed fairly short. It has been so dry here, that might be it, and I haven't been watering there. Still have to wait a bit to compare and contrast, but for sure the volunteer was earliest of all those cherries.