I had 14 volunteer tomatoes come up this year. I usually just till them under when I use the tiller for early weeding. But this year, I just wanted to see what could survive. The location of the volunteers didn't always make sense, because about half were in areas that have never had a tomato planted since I first broke ground on this piece of raw pasture.
Well, the data is in and here's the count. 13 of them were Matt's Wild Cherry and one was a very sour version of what had to be Sungold. Matt's Wild Cherry fruits were just as tasty as the ones I had grown from transplants, and I couldn't see any difference between them and the one I grew from a transplant. The fruit from the Sungold type was sour until the fruit was just about to drop off the plants, and then they were "average" tasting (but not even close to the original Sungold F1's). So, of all those 97 varieties grown in 2011, only MWC and a hybrid reseeded themselves. There were none of the beefsteak types, canning types, pastes, salad sizes, or other cherry types.
It makes me wonder whether or not Sungold's parentage has a very close connection to ground cherrys and Peru.
