I'm never starting seed again.

[gixxerific]

Yeah right.

Just out doing my rounds and I have more volunteers than I know what to do with. I haven't mulched the gardens yet so I keep puling the volunteers but the keep coming back.

I am going to let some of them go for sure but I have had enough tomato volunteers alone to supply the local nursery's, Home Depot and Lowe's I'm serious too. They are everywhere and I mean everywhere.

I also have carrots coming up (I think they are carrots), a bunch of curcubits of unknown origin, swiss chard. Between all that and my crazy idea of broadcasting radish seed over all the beds. I have little tiny plants everywhere.

I didn't have to plant anything it is coming back on it's own, gotta love that.

[Ozark Lady]

Celebration time! They like your garden!

That is a sign that you are doing something very right!

[cynthia_h]

very right or...you're making the same mistake I made in my early years of making compost.

I think it was the second year of making compost, or maybe the first year of actually USING the stuff.

I spread it liberally on the ground around the back-yard roses in Berkeley. The roses responded well. Then, about 10 to 14 days later...a carpet of green plants.

??? ???

I took a closer look, and was somewhat surprised. Tomato plants?! How did so many tomato plants show up at the same time around the ROSES, for heaven's sake??

It took a while, but my brain finally figured this one out. (In the pre-Internet days, folks, one generally had to figure things out alone if experienced relatives weren't nearby; my neighbors were no use--the apartment building to our immediate south was a crack building, and the buildings across the four-lane, divided street from us were public housing.)

Slowly, the incredible solution presented itself to me: I had thrown all my kitchen waste into the compost, and the composting process had *not* de-activated the tomato seeds. At the time, I didn't know about cool/warm/hot compost temps, but I knew complete decomposition vs. incomplete when I saw it, and this was an obvious case of INcomplete decomposition of tomato seeds.

My situation is the same here as it was in Berkeley, so I still can't throw tomato seeds away via compost; the location of the BioStack bin and my available ingredients tend to a cool operation.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Ozark Lady]

I didn't think about compost. I always forget that sometimes it does kill seeds and sometimes it doesn't.

I get alot weed seeds, but, I don't compost, so I just had to invent ways of dealing with them.

I rarely get vegetable volunteers.

I remember pre-internet. Shoot, I remember data processing cards, that we typed out on machines, and had to learn COBOL and FORTRAN and one dot in the wrong place, could get you page after page with one word per page... and you only had books and your own thoughts to help you figure stuff out. I do still have my ancient organic gardening encyclopedia, and still use it occasionally. I just got to know it so well, back then. And fortunately it was on loan out when the house burned... I still have it!

Aww the good old days, in some ways, and in some ways, I like today, when I can look things up online, and ask you guys!

[applestar]

If I dared, and if I didn't want to try new varieties all the time, I WOULD try NOT starting any tomato seeds....

[cynthia_h]

I remember pre-internet. Shoot, I remember data processing cards, that we typed out on machines, and had to learn COBOL and FORTRAN and one dot in the wrong place, could get you page after page with one word per page... and you only had books and your own thoughts to help you figure stuff out. I do still have my ancient organic gardening encyclopedia, and still use it occasionally.

Someone else who remembers "DO loops"? yes? I took FORTRAN in high school...I've been chased out of so many fields of work by technology, it's really sad. Talk about re-inventing...

But back to the tomatoes!

Cynthia