mattie g
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What to do with my volunteers?

I ground-planted dill and cilantro seeds a few weeks ago, and mixed in some of my homemade compostwith the soil prior to doing so. In about a week or two I started seeing all kinds of seedlings coming up and, stragely enough, not all of them had similar cotyledons. As soon as I saw that, I had a feeling I'd be faced with a dilemma within a few weeks...if these are tomatoes, what am I going to do with them? I can't bring myself to throw them all away!

Lo and behold, I probably have about 20 tomato seedlings in an ~12 sq ft area (in addition to what I assume are my dill and cilantro seedlings...and maybe other random volunteers).

I have limited space in my garden, but I have a nice sunny spot available in which I was going to plant edamame seeds. I also might have enough room in a less-sunny part of my garden that could host one or two plants. I have seven tomatos planted this year. If I lose one or two for some reason, I suppose the volunteers would be worthy replacements.

Of course, I have no idea what kind of tomatoes these are. I grew Brandywine, San Marzano, Valencia, Cherokee Purple, and a huge volunteer Roma last year, though I didn't bag the trusses or anything. The biggest volunteer is getting its second set of true leaves, and pretty much all the others have developed/are developing their first true leaves.

So...what should I do? I'm open to suggestions!

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rainbowgardener
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I have gotten very hard-hearted about tomato volunteers. My compost sprouts up tons of them. I have more tomato plants than I know what to do with, that I carefully nurtured under the lights. The volunteers are just weeds.

I have been known to leave a squash volunteer here and there when they pop up in flower beds. Sometimes the vine borers have a harder time finding them in the middle of a densely planted flower bed and they do better than the ones in the veggie garden.

mattie g
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So I guess your suggestion is to pull them all and dump them into the compost bin? Fair enough.

That's one vote!

:D

JayPoc
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Same boat here. Lots of volunteer maters popping up. Most don't fit into my plan, so I guess they have to go. The thing I hate is that I have no idea what type of plant they are...they could be any of the heirlooms I've planted, or hybrids (or even a new hybrid of my hybrids). I think I'm going to thin them as needed and leave a few growing until my started seeds are established in the ground. I have a few that are coming up in the spaces between some of my cabbages and brussels sprouts. I'm thinking I'll leave those ones until they become a problem (if at all). If they're still going fine after the cabbages and sprouts are harvested, I may just leave them there and let them produce. Not sure you can ever have too many maters (especially now that I'm set up for canning).

mattie g
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JayPoc wrote:Same boat here. Lots of volunteer maters popping up. Most don't fit into my plan, so I guess they have to go. The thing I hate is that I have no idea what type of plant they are...they could be any of the heirlooms I've planted, or hybrids (or even a new hybrid of my hybrids). I think I'm going to thin them as needed and leave a few growing until my started seeds are established in the ground. I have a few that are coming up in the spaces between some of my cabbages and brussels sprouts. I'm thinking I'll leave those ones until they become a problem (if at all). If they're still going fine after the cabbages and sprouts are harvested, I may just leave them there and let them produce. Not sure you can ever have too many maters (especially now that I'm set up for canning).
Mine could probably do fine hanging with the dill and cilantro, but it's in a section of my garden that had one failed and one stunted Mortgage Lifter. I'm concerned that it's a section that needs to remain free of tomatoes or peppers for a little bit, but it's entirely possible that the Mortgage Lifters I got were of poor quality and would have cr**ped out anyways.

I'm with you - I freeze a lot of tomatoes for use in salsas and sauces, so I can't really have too many, especially in such a small garden. Decisions, decisions...

JayPoc
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mattie g wrote:
Mine could probably do fine hanging with the dill and cilantro, but it's in a section of my garden that had one failed and one stunted Mortgage Lifter. I'm concerned that it's a section that needs to remain free of tomatoes or peppers for a little bit, but it's entirely possible that the Mortgage Lifters I got were of poor quality and would have cr**ped out anyways.

I'm with you - I freeze a lot of tomatoes for use in salsas and sauces, so I can't really have too many, especially in such a small garden. Decisions, decisions...
You could always scoop a couple of the nicest looking ones and plant them in a container or some out of the way corner of the yard. If they produce, great...if not, nothing lost...

I have the same sort of emotional reaction when I'm thinning stuff.

mattie g
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JayPoc wrote:You could always scoop a couple of the nicest looking ones and plant them in a container or some out of the way corner of the yard. If they produce, great...if not, nothing lost...

I have the same sort of emotional reaction when I'm thinning stuff.
I have quite a few smaller containers left, but the bigger ones are all used up. I'm thinking I can find the ground space to plant a couple here and there - they just wouldn't have ideal sun conditions. But like you said, it's really nothing lost.

As a small gardener, I just don't feel like I get the chance to grow enough as it is, so thinning out what look to be very healthy seedlings is pretty disturbing. :)

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gixxerific
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Tomato volunteers get the boot in my garden. Though I may play around with 1 or 2 for a while, but in the end they get yanked.

Lettuce and some other volunteers I will let go.

mattie g
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gixxerific wrote:Tomato volunteers get the boot in my garden. Though I may play around with 1 or 2 for a while, but in the end they get yanked.

Lettuce and some other volunteers I will let go.
If I'm not mistaken, gixx, you grow plenty from seed, so you don't have to worry so much about having enough/losing some plants. Is that right? If so, I can completely understand not bothering with volunteers. But I don't start from seed, and I think it'd be cool to have some extras around just in case...and also to satisfy my concern that seven tomato plants isn't enough this year. 8)

My volunteer Roma from last year was a beast, and provided tomatoes all season long. I even had a few pounds of green Romas on the plant when first frost finally hit. Maybe, just maybe...

JayPoc
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gixxerific wrote:...

Lettuce and some other volunteers I will let go.
Where the heck to lettuce volunteers come from? I have 4 or 5 volunteer lettuce plants popping up, but I'm pretty darn certain none of my plants went to seed. Where did these guys come from?

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applestar
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I suppose they could be seeds that were buried too deep that are now finding the conditions ideal.

IMHO the advantage of tomato volunteers is that they have undisturbed taproots/root systems. So I don't dig them up or move them if I decide to keep them. They often do better in drought than the seed grown trnasplanted ones.

I rotate so generally speaking, I won't keep volunteers wHere solanacea grew last year to keep the rotation schedule intact.

mattie g
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applestar wrote:I suppose they could be seeds that were buried too deep that are now finding the conditions ideal.

IMHO the advantage of tomato volunteers is that they have undisturbed taproots/root systems. So I don't dig them up or move them if I decide to keep them. They often do better in drought than the seed grown trnasplanted ones.

I rotate so generally speaking, I won't keep volunteers wHere solanacea grew last year to keep the rotation schedule intact.
That's the only reason I'm debating whether or not to leave on or two in place. As I mentioned above, I had problems with Mortgage Lifters in that section last year, but I have a sneaky feeling the plants themselves may have been the issue.

I suppose if I leave a volunteer or two there and they have issues, then I know I have a spot that's bad for tomatoes (at least for the next couple years). I could consider it a live soil trial.

muddynurse
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I'm glad to know I'm not the only one facing this dilemma..... I have probably 150-200ish volunteers that have sprouted in one of my hoop houses. Because I kind of consider myself a rebel/experimenter I think I might select a few of them and let them rip, see what I get. I'm luck enough to have a friend who is also a fellow gardener with a similar mindset so maybe I will pick a few out for her.

I vote to live a little on the edge, if you have room, or a volunteer friend with some open garden space let a few go and see what you get!!

:oops: I tried to attached a picture but it says it too big...and not everyone in their 20-somethings is savvy enough to fight it out!

mattie g
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Interesting thought to maybe give them away, muddynurse...

I pulled 10 or so seedlings yesterday. I have to admit, though, that it was a bit of a relief. Thing is...I still have about 20 more to go!

I'm going to let them go and see what happens. In about two weeks or so, whichever is the hardiest of the bunch will be transplanted to the area where I was going to put the edamame. The next strongest will be transplanted to a section of the garden that doesn't get ideal sunlight. And since there's room for two tomatoes in the dill/cilantro bed, the two strongest plants in the ideal location in that bed will stay put. The rest will be pulled.

It'll be really interesting to see 1) how well they do in each location and 2) see what kind of tomatoes they turn out to be!



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