can someone tell me more about volunteers? they pop up where the old plant used to be?? do they produce as much? what's the difference between a volunteer and a regular tomato plant?

Volunteers are regular tomato plants.

The only differences will depend on the parents. Open-pollinated (aka non-hybrid) types should produce true to form. Hybrids are more of a guessing game, normally regressing to whatever was used to produce them in the first place.

They usually come up where a tomato dropped off the vine and you didn't notice it. The rotting old tomato created a perfect growing medium for the seeds inside and they sprout and grow.

Since tomatoes are self fertile, a volunteer will generally be the same variety as the fruit from whence it sprouted, and given proper care, will be as prolific.

However, since outside conditions are usually not propitious for tomato seeds until long after we have started our seedlings indoors, volunteers often start their growing season about the same time that we set out our nursery plants and so they don't reach the same size and production level as sursery starts.

I usually leave volunteers alone just to see what they will do, unless they are in the way of something else. But I have set out 30 plants this year, so I am not trying very hard to preserve them either. This year I have volunteers coming up in my lettuce, in one of my rows of peas, and several I noticed today growing out of the base of my compost bin.

Wow, I'm learning a lot about volunteers. Thanks! They're kind of magical. I'm amazed that you have some in your compost, ct. I bet they're healthy!!!
I've heard that you can cut off suckers and plant them in the ground, and they'll grow. Has anyone tried that?

I agree that they are kind of magical. They come up in odd and unexpected places.

In addition to the volunteer tomatoes, I have dill, cilantro, basil, corn, peas, beans, sunflowers, cosmos, foxglove, california poppies, batchelor buttons, sweet william and oddest of all, volunteer potatoes coming up this year. Many of these get killed off early as I replenish mulch, work up the beds and prepare for the new garden year, but one fun thing about it is that after a few years of planting seeds indoors, I have learned to identify many of these plants at the seedling stage. This means that I can choose to leave them be early in the season rather than hoeing them out or smothering them with mulch.

At one time my house was owned by another avid gardener and frequently my tillage awakens long dormant seeds or roots from something originally planted 15 or 20 years ago.

For example, this year I found rhubarb growing under a huge spruce tree. Last year I had cleared out the lowest branches of the spruce so that I could begin to introduce some of the wild flowers such as columbine, that grow native in Colorado's alpine meadows and forest fringe.

In addition to the rhubarb, purple clover, asters, batchelor buttons, and cosmos, along with some sort of low growing fern have started to grow up in the area newly exposed to the light.

As for the tomato suckers. Yes, they will root and grow into productive plants. I plan to take suckers from my tomatoes later this summer, root them and use these to restart the greenhouse for a late fall/early winter tomato crop.

My garden never ceases to give me a reason to break out a magnifying glass, sketch pad, field guide, or to head for the library, my two curious little partners camped on my heels.

ct, I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts! You're an excellent writer and so knowledgeable.
I assume your two curious little partners are dogs? We have a dog. She's part australian shepherd and part black lab. She's about 12 years old. She extremely sweet, loyal and affectionate. When I'm in my garden, she lays under the shade of the fig tree and watches. She keeps me company a lot.
Thanks for all that great information on volunteers! I hope that I get some magical plants coming up in my garden, too. It would be fun to discover asparagus or artichokes or something one day. I'd like to plant some tomato suckers. I'd like to have tomatoes in the winter, too, but I don't have a greenhouse. With this Southern California weather, it's sunny most of the year. You'd think tomato plants could grow during all seasons, but I never hear about people growing tomatoes in the Fall. I harvested a tomato from my diseased and struggling to survive tomato plant, and it was DIVINE. It was as sweet as candy.

The cherry tomato volunteers at DBF's house have come up in the worst possible soil...solid clay you could cut into bricks.

They are thriving terrifically...need no watering...are loaded with fruit and flowers.

Go figure.

Truly amazing, Judy. Those are spirited cherry tomatoes. Whoa!
I like your signature. Funny, just yesterday, I was thinking of that expression, "I think therefore I am" and substituting the word "garden" just like you did!

I have volunteer Zucchini in the oddest places in the garden! Had to be seeds spread by critters.

quote:

Originally posted by MissMel:
...I assume your two curious little partners are dogs?...

Nah...Kids! Four and five. They are in the middle of everything. My garden resembles more the chaos of the playroom than the order of a botanical garden. One thing they learned is that neither spaghetti, nor chocolate chips will grow into their favorite foods, but they know how spaghetti sauce is made anyway.

I never lived in southern California, but spent two years in San Jose. I didn't have a garden then, but my memory of the climate leads me to believe that tomatoes could be kept going year-around there. If I lived there still, I'd maybe try starting a couple of new indeterminate tomato plants from seed every four to six weeks in different parts of the garden with the idea that when one got old and weather beaten or blighted, there would be a newer one just beginning to bear.

I'd also grow some determinate varieties during the main season for canning sauces and salsas.

If you have a healthy tomato that you like, try cutting a sucker and putting it in a glass of water. It will send out roots in a week or two and then you can pot it up, or maybe even plant it directly in the garden in a souped up planting hole.

I've also been told that tomato suckers can be rooted directly in good garden soil, but I haven't tried that yet.

Lots of things to try, if only the growing season was longer, I had more ground and didn't have to stop the fun and go out to make a living.

Volunteers can be a lot of fun. This year I have a volunteer tomato that turns out to grow small, striped, and sweet fruit. Then there are CA poppies, cosmos, bachelor buttons, other native wildflowers whose names I don't know, nasturtiums, 4 o'clocks, morning glories, etc etc etc.

Tomatoes don't usually do well in the winter here. The days are too short, the temps too cold at night and not warm enough most days. They are a summer time crop. Why fight it? Grow cool weather crops in the winter, and hot weather crops in the summer, and save yourself a lot of work and aggravation.

Those volunteers are great. At our other place I planted cherry tomatoes and they were still self seeding after 17 years! Even had them coming up in planters several hundred feet away.

When they start coming up in spring, then I know it's time to set out the plants.

Thanks for all the responses, guys and gals. This has been very educational. I love this website!!