The Trouble With Volunteer Tomatoes

Have you ever had little vegetable plants pop up in spots where you haven't planted anything? Or maybe you've seen a tomato plant amidst your squash. These are volunteer plants, plants that have sprouted from seeds that overwintered from the season before. It is common for these volunteer plants to be in the tomato family which can be very exciting, free tomato plants!

The best case scenario is that these volunteer plants are just like the tomatoes you planted last year but what people often don't consider is cross pollination. Some vegetable plants can cross pollinate with other plants in the same family. Cross pollination is when the pollen from one plant reaches the female flower of a different species in the same family of plants and creates a viable seed. An example of this in that animal kingdom is a ligar, a mix of a tiger and lion, which can then go on to mate with another liger, a tiger, or a lion and have more ligar babies. In the plant kingdom tomato plants in the Solanaceae family can cross pollinate and create seeds that can go on to grow hybrid plants and those hybrids can cross pollinate and create more hybrid plants! In home gardens it is common to grow different varieties in close proximity to save space, these varieties are at risk of creating hybrid seeds. It is not guaranteed because tomatoes can self pollinate, meaning a single flower has all the parts it needs to pollinate itself and create viable seeds, but the risk of cross pollination is still something a home gardeners should consider when letting volunteers grow.

So if you are saving your seeds year to year, or if a tomato drops to the ground and releases its seeds to over winter, than you could end up with some interesting hybrids the next year. Interesting does not mean good it could be a plant that is sterile and never produces fruit, or the fruit could be off and bad tasting. That being said the volunteer plants are not always bad you could end up with some beautiful colored tomatoes full of unique flavor. I like to hedge my bets by letting a few of the volunteers that I think look healthy grow, while also planting my own tomatoes from seeds I purchased, or from seedlings from a nursery. The seeds form seeds companies come from tomato plants grown in species isolation so that there is no cross pollination. 

If you choose to get ride of all of your volunteer tomatoes or just some you can use the removed plants for compost, or you can dry them out and burn them to use the ash as a soil amendment later in the season.

If you really want to save your seeds year to year you can also use little cheese cloth bags over each flower, or group of flowers, on a plant to keep the pollen from drifting to other plants. 

This year I suggest letting a few volunteers grow if you have the room and experience the excitement of not knowing exactly what fruit you will get! To me part of the fun of gardening is experimenting and exploring.