I would suggest that you let em grow. They will produce tomatoes and will most likely be one of the varieties you grew last year. The could also be a hybrid. If so you might get a neat tomato. It just might not be what grew last year. Some outstanding varieties have been produced from cross pollinating. If they are not damaged from the frost they should be fine. I guess the main question would be whether they are growing in a location where you want them. They likely would shade out some of your onions.

They are commonly called "volunteers". Not sure why you are calling them 'rouge'(are they wearing cosmetics? :) or do you mean 'rogue'?

And most of us have them popping up every year. Whether you let them grow or just treat them as weeds is up to you as it all depends on the garden space you have available and how you want to use it.

They will bear fruit as Kevin said but no, you will not be able to tell for sure what variety they are before they produce fruit and maybe not even after they do.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Volunteer tomato discussions

I used to pull up and transplant elsewhere about 12 volunteers when they came up in my tomato field each Spring, just to see if I could ID them.

Tomato fruits that fall to the gound in the Fall usually don't make it through the winter but if those fruits become dried out then yes, they can.And sometimes a whole clump of volunteers would appear, clearly, at least to me, of lots of fruits of one variety that made it though the winter.

Sometimes I could ID a variety and sometimes not. The reason you can't ID a variety is b'c, usually, it's the result of a cross pollinated fuit.

At that time I was growing about 600-800 plants and usually about 2-300 varieties each season.

Another reason why you wouldn't be able to ID a variety would be if if the volunteer plant was from F2 seeds of the original hybrid. But most years I never grew hybrid varieties.

Carolyn

I would guess they are Romas. I always had volunteers when I grew them. But in spite of their early start, they rarely ended up as big or productive as the tomatoes I started inside in the usual way. It may be that the cold and lack of early nutrients permanently set them back. I hope you report back at the end of the season to let us know how they turn out.

Thank you everyone for the advice!

Lol @ digdirt, yes my autocorrect substituted wrong.

I've got the bigger ones moved and with a few small ones still in there. They are seperate from my other tomato plants, so I'll keep and eye on them and report back as the season progresses.

I had a good crop last year of hybrid plants, and this year decided to try heirlooms. This group had a lot of great suggestions, so I'm trying out a bunch to see which ones I like.

Thanks!

Destruction of volunteer plants is an important practice in the control of several diseases, because it prevents large populations of pathogens from surviving from one cop to another. Crop rotation also works to prevent crop to crop survival of specific tomato pathogens.

That comes from this page: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vh056

This is from advice offered by my local extension. I don't know how relevant it is for you in your area. Just something else you may want to consider.

I currently have about 2 dozen volunteers in my garden that have sprouted. I think that they came from two or three different individual tomatoes. I am going to dig them up today and find a home for them when I plant. I also have a few volunteer tomatillos who will also find a home.

Kevin

I get volunteers every year, but the interesting thing, is they often show up in garden beds or barrels where I've never grown tomatoes. My best guess is that they come from my compost which I use all over, although I also get them in barrels and garden areas that I haven't used compost in as well, so there must be animals or something doing it as well. Although I grow several types of varieties, the volunteers almost without fail end up to be cherry tomatoes, likely sweet 100's that I normally grow. They don't usually produce as well as the inside starts, but I think that's mostly because they start later, then I do indoors and just don't have as much time to grow large.

I get lots of volunteers. The few that I miss pulling out and end up growing tend to grow small tomatoes that are a little bigger than cherry tomatoes. Note that hybrids will not grow the same thing from the seeds that are produced in the fruit.

Capoman, birds are well known to disseminate tomato seed so that's something else to consider.

I'm surprised so many of you say that your volunteers give only small cherry sized fruits.

I always got big ones and little ones of different colors and shapes from different volunteer plants and as I said above I loved transplanting those volunteers to see if I could ID them.

All I can think of is that cherry tomatoes are closest to the original wild type and perhaps are more able to overwinter. But then over wintering means different things to folks in different geographic areas, so who knows.

For instance Matt's Wild, introduced by Johnny's quite a few years ago is IDed as a cerasiforme next the name and that's important to know b'c if it were a currant variety there's a 50% chance the stigma would be above the pollen bearing anthers and thus require insect pollination.

A cerasiforme is a half domesticated cherry where the stigma is below the anthers.

If it were a true currant variety it would be IDed as Solanum pimpinellifolium.

Carolyn