I've often wondered, given how easily tomatoes volunteer, if you could just seed your tomatoes in the fall and let nature take it's course. I'm putting in new beds this year, so I may try it come fall.

You're not alone with your late planting. I'm vowing to get the rest of my stuff in the ground this weekend. I usually wait until just after Mother's Day week since I take that week off and it's a lousy time to leave new plants on their own. Unfortunately, with my middle daughter graduating this year and all the associated activities, I'm just now getting things going full strength.

I dug a bunch of spoiling tomatoes and food scraps into my raised beds last fall (I was doing a lazy man's version of lasagna gardening, sort of). I figured they'd decompose under the dirt and add some goodies to the soil. This year I've had at least 12 random tomato plants popping up in weird places. I may try the fall seeding method this year too! That's a great idea.

Aren't there some tomatos that reseed more than others? I thought I read this somewhere on the forum a year or so ago. I know Yellow Pear reseeded for me. At the time I grew it I thought it was a nice tasting tomato, but then anything tastes better than a store-bought tomato, LOL!

Can you name some of the other varieties that have reseeded for you? Just curious.

I try to check the forums at least once a day, but my DD is about to have her baby. Have had lots of signs that the end is near. Charlotte (Charly) or Sophia will make her appearance shortly......we think!

Susan

Lucky duck! I was hoping my cherry toms would reseed, but no such luck.

Beth

Glenda, The folks I know who've either had Black Cherry reseed and volunteer, or who've saved seeds and planted them, seem to have gotten true Black Cherry plants so I think it is likely you will as well.

Most tomatoes reseed pretty easily but if you grow a lot of tomato varieties, you have no idea which ones reseeded until they form fruit. I pull out volunteers and toss them on the compost pile because I don't want to give space to a plant when I don't know what it is.

Susan, it is usually the small, bite-sized tomatoes that reseed most easily and that's because it is easy to drop one and lose it in the mulch or the foliage of companion plants. So, it sits there and rots, and then the seeds come up the next year. With larger tomatoes, if you drop one, you tend to see the fruit and pick them up. Sometimes I get tomato plants in the compost pile, especially because I dump the seeds there after my tomato strainer removes them when I'm making sauce. Based on how many tomato seeds and pepper seeds I dumped there last year while canning, I ought to have huge numbers of volunteers in my pasture compost pile, but it is furthest from the house and full of snakes so I don't even stand there and look at it. I just walk back there, heave the contents of the compost bucket onto it, and scurry back to the house before I find a snake or something worse. Last year, a bobcat hung around that compost pile a lot.

I hope Jess has an easy labor to make up for the difficult pregnancy and that little Charly or Sophia makes her grand debut soon. I bet Kenna is excited about becoming a big sister!

Beth, Throw a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes somewhere that you DON'T want to grow tomatoes and I guarantee you they'll come up in that spot just so you have to dig them up and move them someplace else.

Dawn

I toss my volunteers as well. One tomato I sure don't want in my garden ever again is the Juliet. I hated those "things" last year. They produced zillions of small grape type tomatos all summer long but the skins were tough and the fruit lacked flavor. And they just wouldn't quit!
Space wasters imo.

On the subject of snakes, I only saw one under a zuchinni bush in my garden proper last summer. I think I scared it more than it scared me...well, maybe :) The cats killed some small ones out front.

This year, since I'm growing melons on the ground, I think I'll be wearing tall rubber boots out there come picking time. I don't want any "surprises" among the weeds, squashes OR Melons..you just have to be so careful, take a hoe to push vines aside, and even then be cautious about where you put your hand.

Y'all be careful. We don't need anyone's summer ruined by a bite.

Barbara

Barbara, I wholeheartedly agree with you on Juliet for fresh eating, but I like it for dehydrating. Think about it....when you dehydrate tomatoes the skin gets tough so that's OK, and dehydration removes the water and intensifies/concentrates the flavor. So, if I'd been trying to develop a tomato that worked well for dehydration (but NOT for fresh eating), Juliet would be it. I planted them this year but only for dehydrating.

Although we have not necessarily seen a lot of snakes at our house this year, our neighbors have had oodles and oodles. I hope we're seeing fewer because the cats are keeping down the rodent numbers and that means the snakes have no reason to come here. We've only had 1 copperhead and 1 bull snake up terribly close to the house, and both of them are no longer with us.

Lots of folks here have had big problems with snakes coming into their garages and barns, presumably seeking cooler shelter during the heat of the day. One of our friends has had 3 copperheads in his garage already, and it is only May.

I am always as careful as I can be and try to watch for snakes all the time, but have come terrifying close to them upon occasion and didn't care for that experience one bit.

Dawn

...and here I keep thinking I want to move to the country. You guys almost have me giving up flip-flop gardening in my little bitty city garden.