Haven't a clue what I'm doing.....

I just planted out 8 tomato seedlings in my veggie garden. Yes, they were small, but they are hardy! No coddling here!!

So, if I'm understanding all this, in a colder zone like zone 4, I should select a variety that has a shorter maturity date. This really isn't for me, but I have a friend who's a tomato adict and I've told him about this and, of course, he's very skeptical. So if he tries it next year, I want to be sure we don't make too many mistakes.

Listen, here in zone 6b I have about 200+ tomato seedling volunteers popping up all over my garden, from fallen fruit last year and from birds and my chickens helping, no doubt. If they self-sow this well, tomatoes are a fantastic wsing candidate. I should add that I start tomatoes indoors 6 weeks before frost date and that the garden seedlings are at least the same size (I keep hoeing them but there are a couple I let grow) as the indoor-started ones, and certainly more acclimated.

Oh my. I've never had tomatos come up like that....
Do the volunteers grow produce good fruit?

Steve

Last summer they didn't, and I don't know where the heck they came from because it was a first year garden. I suppose birds got into the compost heap and pooped supermarket tomato seeds into the garden...? Nasty tasting. I was actually worried they were crossed with deadly nightshade or something so we didn't eat them. I swore I wouldn't be soft on any volunteers this year, so I guess I won't be finding out, but all the tomatoes I grew were open-pollinated so I suppose the volunteers could easily be true to type.

Got potato volunteers too, but I might let them grow.

Glad this topic came up....I get volunteers each year as well from dropped tomatoes and haven't ever let them go to maturity. So...this year I am going to purposely "drop" a couple of tomatoes in milk jugs...let them rot behind the shed and then put the jugs on the back porch in the sun approximately in February to see if they will winter sow...that way I can find out if they "come true". HM

just my input - my w/s tomatoes are almost the same size as the ones I started indoors. I did this as a test. They are now in the same containers with the same soil to see if there is a difference in the fruit. I also have the indoor and 2 w/s in WOW's and two without to see if that makes a difference too.