I imagine you'll get tomatos from your volunteer ;-) I live down near San Antonio, and I was a little late with getting my tomatos in ;-( so I had quite a number of volunteers pop up (had no idea what they were) so I just caged them, fert. them, and started watering them...they all have fruit now ;-) of course they were all the same variety, Coyote tomato, which are really tasty, but I have no big tomatos now. I did go ahead and plant some larger tomatos a week or so ago..I've had fair luck with getting fruit even if I did get them in kind of late, in the past....so I'd go for it ;-)

Most tomatoes self-pollinate, however there's still a chance of cross pollination from other varieties, especially by bees. Sungold has a very complex parentage, it's not a simple hybrid with 2 parents, so the chances of the volunteers being like Sungold will vary greatly. There's a chance if you get fruit that they can be orange, red, etc. If it were a simple hybrid bred from just 2 stable non-hybrid parents, you can usually expect something similar to either parent or something in-between the 2 parents. Many people attempted to "de-hybridize" Sungold and some have come up with an open pollinated stable variety, (actually a couple, Sungold Select and Sungold Select II) however they lack some of the outstanding flavor of the original F1 hybrid and many feel the original F1 is much better. There's a missing taste quality that amateur breeders & de-hybridizers cannot duplicate. Some have grown volunteers or saved seeds and have reportedly got similar tomatoes, though there's no real way of telling just how close to the original they are. And some have reported different colors and tastes. I think if you had that many plants, I'm sure they all should produce and maybe you can compare them to each other. The wild card in the mix is if they cross pollinated with the other varieties you grew last year, which would throw a monkey wrench into the predictions of what you'll get! So do grow them, compare them, and report your results. With so many plants between you and your friends, you may find one with that "missing ingredient." You'd get more replies about Sungold in the Tomato Forum at GardenWeb too, where others have grown both volunteers, later F generations, and intentional crosses. We'd be interested to hear/see your results! Hope this helps. Mark Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Web's Tomato Forum

DABT, as I have an interest in wild edible plants I have learned a few things. One important thing you can assume is ALL MUSHROOMS ARE POISONOUS. They are difficult to tell apart from the edible ones without a microscope. The other thing is, poisonous plants usually (but not always) taste bad, really bad, so if a kid starts to chew on one, he will soon spit it out. So, in the interest of keeping things simple so you can keep your kids safe, let me make some generalizations which will put you on the safe side of caution: - All white berries are poisonous. - Plants which are poisonous taste bitter. - Plants with white/milky sap are generally poisonous (except cow parsnip above, which has a clear sap) - All fungi and mushrooms are poisonous and some can kill with just one small taste. - Hemlock is poisonous (see Socrates) and looks just like wild carrot/Queen Anne's Lace. You can get a book on Edible Wild Plants. Mine shows me what similar but poisonous plants look like. So it shows me wild carrot, and shows me hemlock also, and tells me the differences, which are very subtle indeed. Many field guides to plants or wild flowers also tell you which ones are poisonous. Post the phone number to your poison control center on your fridge. Make sure it is in a handy place where kids can't pull it down and lose it. One thing I learned as a parent is kids eat all kinds of things, like coins, legos, small beads, gum, and apple seeds (which contain cyanide compounds), yet they have no ill effects for the most part. And they don't make "chink chink" sounds when they walk around from all the coins, they don't pass a whole spaceship in the toilet from all the lego pieces they ate, and an apple tree doesn't grow in their stomach. Be vigilent but don't make yourself crazy.

Tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants are members of the Nightshade family; a family of plants that contains many well known poisonous members. These plants have varying levels of alkaloids that have steroidal properties. Though the fruit is now known to be safe, poisoning can occur from the ingestion of the leaves, vines, or unripe fruit. There have been reports of livestock being poisoned by crossing fences to forage through a tomato patch and even by farmers adding the suckers culled from their tomato vines to the livestock feed. Nightshade poisoning can be difficult to detect because the symptoms can be mistaken for a variety of ailments. Those symptoms are: lethargy, vomiting, difficult breathing, prostration, and constipation or diarrhea. Since these symptoms do not easily point to alkaloid poisoning it is best to take preventative measures to ensure the safety of your herd. From Plants Poisonous to Livestock U of Minn. Extension No more green tomatoes for the cows. ;) Dave