they come from tomato seeds  :)

actually the thing to do is pick some that are in acceptable spots and see how many free tomaotoes you get!! tomato seeds are real good at surviving, in compost or just in the garden soil, from rotten drops or even the un-ripe ones that got caught out by the frost last year, especially cherry and grape toms, which tend to sprout in clusters

Bill

"especially cherry and grape toms, which tend to sprout in clusters"

If memory serves, those are also the ones that produce tomatoes that look good. The larger ones tend to produce frankematoes that may be edible, but are pretty scary looking.

Ha ha ha. After I posted this, I did some hard thinking and now I remember I DID put tomatoes in the pile. A boatload of green ones when the frost finally came. (I don't like green tomatoes) And it would have been the exact same time I was putting in those pumpkins from my uncle's fall display....they were too hard to chop up so I left them out until they froze overnight, then thawed, and then they were mush.

The pumpkins heated the pile, but obviously not enough. LOL. I've got pumpkin plants (or maybe gourds, I dunno) sprouting in lots of places too. ROFL. In the areas where I've got other curcurbits, I'll just have to let them grow until fruit sets because I can't tell them apart from the melons, cukes and squash.

On the tomatoes, I'll pull most of them up, but I'm going to leave a couple just to see what I get. I didn't grow any cherries or grapes...some Better Boys, Early Girls, Caspian Pink and something else I've forgotten. Gonna be fun to see what I end up with. All the plants are ROBUST and healthy as heck. Of course they're growing in a layer of compost!

When they first erupted, I thought they were marigolds because I've planted those everywhere. It's taken me a few weeks to accept that I've got tomatoes everywhere. LOL.

I got my pile up to 175 in late winter, but obviously only the top half. The pumpkins and tomatoes were in the bottom.

I've decided to buy one of those winged compost aerator things so I can mix it up better. I was just kind of fluffing.

It's all education....each year I learn more and more. :)

I had started a response and was asking if you had put any home made compost on your garden, then went back and re read your initial posting and backed out of it. If some of the compost is unfinished, you will find all kinds of things coming up from what has been applied. Tomatoes and potatoes are very common.

My sense of smell is much keener now that it was before my triple bypass and quitting smoking after 54 years, but I think that even rather small tomato plants would have a distinctive odor if you pulled up a few and kinda crushed them to smell of. If they smell like tomato plants, mystery solved.
Bill P.

I get tons of voluteer tomato plants in my compost pile.

I love it when I get volunteer potatoes. The tomatoes I have to be a little more selective.

I see you've solved your mystery, but I aways get a few volunteers in places where I couldn't possibly have put a tomato seed, and I chalk those up to theiving birds or rodents who later "fertilized" my perennial beds. I've got a potato-leaf tomato plant among my hosta right now, I'm gonna let it grow and see what I get.

I weeded out most of the volunteers in the tomato bed. They're too small to give me any fruit before frost anyway.

Must be a good year for tomato volunteers. We made an enormous lasagna bed last fall, with lots of old produce in it. We were given 8 tomato plants by a friend, then we bought 16 tomato plants (4 4-packs of interesting kinds) and of course there are hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, because a lasagna bed composts slowly and not very hot. I did leave numerous volunteers in suitable spots and put some dirt around them.

The most interesting experiment is where two big clusters of tomato plants very near each other were coming up in sort of a tomato plant bloom. Mostly I pulled such things out and went for the biggest singletons, and transplanted them around. But these clusters are so fascinating, there are like 60 tomato plants coming up within 6 inches of each other, and they are growing like crazy. I am leaving them just to see if they actually make tomatoes and how they do.

Because of the abundance of tomatoes, I planted my plants as close together as I thought I possibly could. Then I found all the pepper volunteers, so I stuck those between the tomato plants. :-) Also have mystery melons coming up all over. I pull a lot of things out, but I also let a lot grow. I also sold some of the mystery melons at a rummage sale, and people actually bought all of them. They were similarly intrigued by not knowing what they were. Last year I got a nice watermelon and some cantaloupes from volunteer vines, but this year I have some humongous bush vines that I am wondering about. Will be an interesting summer!

Marcia

Ha Ha, Julianna, I had the same thing, everywhere I composted I saw little tomatoes coming up. People work so hard to grow tomatoes, so I'm letting them stay. I always end up pulling out sprouting garlic from my pile and planting it. Calif. poppies everywhere. Sprouting avocado pits too. Those died, I guess they are better without my help. My compost pile never seems to get very hot, so I NEVER put in any kind of undesirable weed seed. Sheesh, if I try to grow seeds, forget it, but the compost pile seems to handle it well.

We had a lot of volunteer tomatoes from the compost last year. We left them to grow and that was a huge mistake! They crowded each other and produced rotten little fruit. I would only leave a very few for experiments, but make sure they are where you want them. As for volunteer potatoes, we had a few and I dug one up on May 30th and had the first new potatoes of the year. They were delicious!