GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Can I get tomato plants from seeds of store-bought tomatoes?

Boron Elgar[_2_] · 23-04-2015, 01:34 AM posted to rec.gardens

On Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:38:34 +0000 (UTC), lid (Drew
Lawson) wrote:

In article
Boron Elgar writes:

I am a devoted composter and have gotten great "volunteers" from the
winter's store-bought tomato leavings that have contained seeds in
what has gotten spread on beds come spring.

The trip through the compost isn't even needed. I get a lot of
volunteers from unnoticed dropped fruit in the garden. I try not
to let those survive long, since I try to move the tomatoes around
year-to-year. It lessens the chances of disease problems.

Actually, I allow the volunteers that come up in one of my usual
tomato plots (tulips in the spring, tomatoes in summer). In fact, I
see many volunteers already up among the tulips.

I have found that such volunteers are extremely hardy and quite
disease-resistant. Survival of the fittest.

That tomato plot is atypical in many ways. I rarely put in
transplants, but past-frost sow from seeds once I pull up the tulips
in that bed. I consider these tulips as annuals.

I pop a few seeds into each of the many holes I make with as I move
along the bed. The tomatoes are grown quite close together with the
foliage getting extremely dense as the season progresses.

Never had a disease problem up there, always had great success with
the kind of planting that all my gardener instincts tell me is wrong.

Here are a few pickings of late season grabs from that bed last year.

http://i60.tinypic.com/1juddi.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/10nghl1.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/28vzl1e.jpg