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tomato volunteer plants

by stephanie
(Cincinnati Ohio)

can a volunteer tomato plant bear fruit?

Doug says that if it starts growing early enough in the season to produce flowers - and those flowers have enough time to set and ripen fruit - yes.

If it starts late in the season - no.

But the volunteer started from a seed - and there is no reason why a seed won't produce fruit if given the right conditions.

Having said that - the fruit it does produce may not resemble the parent if the parent was a hybrid. So there's no telling what you'll have when it does give you fruit.

But it's a fun thing to do! Let us know how it turns out.

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tomato volunteer plants

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volunteer plants
by: tonya

we no longer bother to plant cherry tomatoes after our first 2 yrs gardening.. these guys pop up every year all over the place... this yr we have volunteer yellow pear tomato plants - no idea where they came from - but that's part of the fun of gardening...

Volunteer Tomato Plant
by: Valerie

I had a volunteer tomato plant come up in a flower pot this summer, directly under a finch nest. (I guess that explains where the seed came from!), and it is producing lots of clumps of very sweet cherry tomatoes. My gardening-buff sister looked down her nose at my leggy, unattractive tomato plant, but I kept it anyway. Now I'm glad I did!
After all the bird seed I've fed to the messy little finches, they finally gave a gift back!

Volunteer Tomato Plant
by: Valerie

I had a volunteer tomato plant come up in a flower pot this summer, directly under a finch nest. (I guess that explains where the seed came from!), and it is producing lots of clumps of very sweet cherry tomatoes. My gardening-buff sister looked down her nose at my leggy, unattractive tomato plant, but I kept it anyway. Now I'm glad I did!
After all the bird seed I've fed to the messy little finches, they finally gave a gift back!

Very sweet
by: Anonymous

I allowed a few of my volunteer tomato plants to continue growing last year. The were the sweetest tomatoes I have ever tasted. Have no idea where the seed came from. The seedlings grew up in June and produced small tomatoes in August until frost.

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