So, last season I got a decent compost. At the end of the season, I added the remainder of my garden scraps, etc. And although early on I got a nice cooking pile, the last bit got neglected and didn't heat up. So needless to say, I have hundreds of tomato volunteers and a mystery pumpkin coming up. I am going to leave my pumpkin there because I am harvesting the lettuce near it over the next 2-3 weeks. In this bed, I planted carrots, spinach, lettuce. Last year I had some tomato volunteers that I left undisturbed and had some nice plants. I transplanted about 6 to my tomato section in my other bed.
I do want to leave some in this bed undisturbed. I have already hand pulled and hoed most of the volunteers. I have about 50 still in there and they are pretty crowded. Other than the carrots, everything else will be out of the ground soon. Should I take my chance on a wild tomato forest and see what happens or hand select a few strong plants, space them out and pull the rest?
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
You can dig a few and transplant them - tomato plants respond well to transplanting if buried deeper than they were. Or you can leave them in place and just thin/ cull. But you must thin them out. A "wild tomato forest" of a bunch of plants very close together, will not end up producing anything.
Everywhere I use my compost, I get volunteer tomatoes. As marlingardener said, that isn't such a bad thing. Except for the occasional squash, I don't get other weeds from it, so I don't mind.
Everywhere I use my compost, I get volunteer tomatoes. As marlingardener said, that isn't such a bad thing. Except for the occasional squash, I don't get other weeds from it, so I don't mind.