Interesting way to grow tomatoes!

[Heidi]

On saturday I set a proporgator full of different beans. They've been on the (not so sunny) windowsill ever since. Yesterday they had just started to peep through and in 2 of the cells where beans are growing are also 2 small plants (seed leaves only) that look suspiciously like tomato plants!

Thing is i re-used the soil from the proporgator before which had had tomatoes in it, but not all of them germinated, so i thought the seeds weren't viable. But now they've come up!!! Bizzarre!

Anyone else found this?

[nick the grief]

sometimes the seed will take months to germinate. I guess its Natures way of protecting the species. If it all came up at once and there was a sudden drought it would become extinct.

The poppies thet grew in the battlefields at the end of WW1 lay dormant for years.

[rustylady]

It does happen. I would carefully move them on into small pots of their own - unless you have enough tomato plants, of course.

[Snadger]

I set dome raspberry seeds in a pot in the autumn. I watered them diligently and a couple of weeks ago put the pot outside and stopped watering them as I thought they had failed.
To my surprise, I noticed a host of little raspberry seedlings growing in the dry compost yesterday!
Sometimes we can kill plants with kindness!

[tricia]

I have spent some time today pulling out incipient tomato seedlings from various pots which were filled with compost from the composter when I repotted some fruit trees into larger containers. Obviously, the compost did not get hot enough to destroy the seeds from last year's tomatoes. (I made a lot of passata!!). Bearing in mind that we are still in April and the containers are outside I think that next year I should just toss tomato seed into pots outside and let them get on with it. They seem to do just as well as the mollycoddled plants in the greenhouse .

Tricia

[Flummery]

I've had toms come up in the greenhouse border from the odd dropped tomato the previous year. No bringing indoors to protect from frost etc. Snadger is right - we are too kind!

[Heidi]

I'll definately be planting them on once they're big enough to handle - no idea which variety they are, but we haven't had too much success with a tomatoes from seed so far this year and I don't mind having a glut if they all grow and fruit

[Headfry]

I drop a few tomato seeds in the greenhouse border in late autumn- when they germinate I use this as a good indication that the time is right to sow direct in the greenhouse- no heat needed!

[Matt.]

Its amazing how hardy tomato seeds are. I know a chap who obtained a lot of treated "soil" from a sewage works so he could have raised borders in his garden. The first summer was amazing - the most tomato plants I've ever seen all growing without any care and attention! It would appear that like cockroaches can survive nuclear bombs tomato seeds can survive some of the most servere heat treatment....

[TPeers]

Did we *need* to know that cockroaches are un-killable!

As for tomatoes - I'll try some organised neglect, TLC is producing very little!

Interesting thread, thanks

Terry