Mega Crop Of Volunteers

[ContainerTed]

Never seen so many in any year. I had the garden tilled and then let it settle. Since then, we've had the mega-rain that has Norris Lake overflowing the dam. Also we've had a couple of record high temps and some wind advisories (one in effect right now). So, it's about two weeks before my normal plant out date of May 15 and the right time to get the main garden (110' by 40') tilled again as the final prep before planting.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Lots of .... no, hundreds of .... no, maybe thousands of VOLUNTEERS from last year. I took some pictures and they don't do the situation justice at all. There had to be a bunch of these volunteers up when I had the garden tilled. But here it is definitely AFTER the tilling and there are several hundreds up and some of them are as much as 10 inches tall.

I carefully captured about two dozen of them and found regular, potato, and rugose leaf plants. Yes, I pulled about a dozen of the dwarf volunteers I found. Normally, in my garden, I will have maybe a dozen and they have been Matt's Wild Cherry every time. I can't explain this one.

Here's some picture to let you have a peek at this phenomenon I discovered. It kinda made me want to till up another patch of yard and let this one just grow whatever it had to offer.

Here's what the root systems on all of them looked like.
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And, yes, there were quite a few Dwarfs.
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Big potato leaf plant in the center.
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And a larger regular leaf in the center
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In these following photos, approximately 30% to 50% of all the greenery is tomato volunteers.

[jmsieglaff]

That's awesome Ted! So are you going to keep those ones you've dug for a surprise section of the garden?

[clkeiper]

That is amazing. a lot of wasted seed, huh? my entire row of paste tomatoes last year was self germinating from the previous years crop. I ran the tiller up one side and down the other leaving a narrow strip of tomatoes and placed cages down the row thinned out all the rest.

[ContainerTed]

Yeah, I'll probably have a "What are they" row somewhere in the main garden. Here's most of the ones I recovered. The small "six pact has a bunch of the dwarf types. The blue cup has the largest one I kept. There are a few larger ones, but this one had a lot of antho showing in the stem. The bugs had already found them and eaten a few holes in the foliage. My constant infestation of Colorado Potato Beetles had been there and laid a few batches of eggs.

I'll be re-tilling the garden sometime next week and starting the beans, cabbages, perhaps peas, and whatever else trips my trigger. The tomatoes will go in after that. Our average last frost date is May 15. We are scheduled for frost this Saturday night into Sunday morning. Timing this year is working out very well.

[clkeiper]

well, that would be a great "experiment" to see if anything survives the frost. that would be a keeper to give a try.

[ContainerTed]

Originally Posted by clkeiper

That is amazing. a lot of wasted seed, huh? my entire row of paste tomatoes last year was self germinating from the previous years crop. I ran the tiller up one side and down the other leaving a narrow strip of tomatoes and placed cages down the row thinned out all the rest.

Yeah, I even thought about having another part of the property tilled for the main garden and letting this whole thing just sprawl as it wants. That would be interesting.

Like you did, I could have about 6-10 of those concentrations that could be a partial row. How was your production on that "mini row"?

[ContainerTed]

Originally Posted by clkeiper

well, that would be a great "experiment" to see if anything survives the frost. that would be a keeper to give a try.

Yes, that is also in the works. I hope it will be a good (at least medium) frost. That might help kill off the weeds and such as well. Of course it will not be good for my apples that are about one inch in diameter right now.

[jmsieglaff]

Ted, what elevation are you at? Or is it cold air draining in a valley? I'm surprised your average last frost date is similar to mine, if not a couple days later.

[ContainerTed]

Originally Posted by jmsieglaff

Ted, what elevation are you at? Or is it cold air draining in a valley? I'm surprised your average last frost date is similar to mine, if not a couple days later.

We're only at about 1100 MSL. But, we are at the foothills of the mountains that are known as the Cumberland Plateau. Our temperatures here mimic Knoxville sometimes, but most of the time we can subtract about 4 or so degrees from whatever Knoxville gets and they are forecast to have 35 to 38 depending on which TV channel you watch.

[clkeiper]

I had romas and san marzanos in the row. I saw no difference in production from the previous year to last years picking. the plants were absolutely beautiful, too. nicer than if I had started them in the greenhouse. It made me really sad to til under all the potential I saw.

[ContainerTed]

Hmmmmm! I wonder if this adds some validation to winter sowing the seeds. Trudi must be pleased with that kind of report.

[clkeiper]

I couldn't afford to do this with any of my hybrids. I paid 1.00 for each seed for my greenhouse/high tunnel tomatoes. eek. I then promptly killed off one crop so I ended up paying 2.00ea for them dbl eek.

[clara]

How much I'd prefer having all those little tomato plants instead of all the weeds!

[wildcat62]

Originally Posted by ContainerTed

We're only at about 1100 MSL. But, we are at the foothills of the mountains that are known as the Cumberland Plateau. Our temperatures here mimic Knoxville sometimes, but most of the time we can subtract about 4 or so degrees from whatever Knoxville gets and they are forecast to have 35 to 38 depending on which TV channel you watch.

Ted you surprised me with that plant out date also. We are supposed to see 38 this weekend up here in the Ohio valley. Praying we don't have frost. If it comes down to it I'll have to cover them up. I have close to 60 already in the ground. Barely survived a hail storm last Friday night.

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by wildcat62

Ted you surprised me with that plant out date also. We are supposed to see 38 this weekend up here in the Ohio valley. Praying we don't have frost. If it comes down to it I'll have to cover them up. I have close to 60 already in the ground. Barely survived a hail storm last Friday night.

cover them with anything you can cover with. blossoms are already forming an you will see a crop of nasty cat faced, cracked, split, megablossoms etc. from the cold weather once they get cold.