Sometimes these "volunteer" plants will not produce any food. Other times, they may produce some oddly shaped things, and they may not taste quite as good as the original (or they may taste better).

I remember we used to get lots of volunteer tomato plants in our garden. We would usually pull the plants from the larger tomatoes, because the results were somewhat unpredictable. The cherry tomato plants usually produced tomatoes that were about the same as the original.

We usually saved seeds from the biggest pumpkins we grew and planted them the next year.

If you want to know exacltly what you'll get, you need to stick with buying plants or seed each year. If you're willing to experiment some, you can let the volunteer plants grow and see what you get. You may want to try something somewhere in between, letting some grow and planting some new.

Jen, so many of the plants and seed we purchase are hybrids that you can't really know what is going to show up as offspring. Some of the parents may have no apparent value to the home gardener at all. They may have only been used in breeding because of their resistance to disease or earliness to fruit. The hybrid was what you wanted but now everything is likely to be a jumble.

Further, and unlike BPgreen, our volunteer tomatoes seldom have time to produce fruit if allowed to grow - and I've only done that a couple of times (once successfully with a Russian variety). Your peppers must be from an ornamental variety. Maybe you should transplant to your flower beds if it isn't too late to do so.

You'll have volunteers every year. If you have space for experimentation - that's one thing. I think you'd be much happier with your vegetable garden if you look at those volunteers as good, compostable material.

Steve

You know I pulled most of them but my daughter wanted to transplant the peas and beans and so far we have tons of peas and beans which I didn't plant this year so that's fine. I did save one tomato because it is as big as the ones I planted. I have room to experiment. Now the pepper plant is a mystery, I had habs, jalapenos, cayenne, anaheims, serranos, and some bells. None of which were purple leaved....weird. I am sure it is just some weird hybrid. I will let it grow and just watch it but the rest I am pulling. This year I doubled my garden so I had walking room, last year was a shock when the squash grew. So I do have a little room to let a couple things grow just out of curiousity. Thanks for your info. Sometimes I worry about the questions I ask...

Jen

Nothing to worry about, Jen. Last year, the neighbor had all these volunteer squash plants that he thought would be okay to allow to grow. They took up a lot of space and produced nothing he was interested in eating. This Spring, the same tractor cultivated the neighbor's and my gardens. It carried the squash seed into my garden. Neither of us was tempted to allow it to grow this year.

Peas, beans, lettuce and tomatoes are self-pollinating. The volunteers will come back true to type if the original was not a hybrid and, except for tomatoes, I believe that the others are always or nearly always nonhybrids.

The neighbor does well by allowing his pole beans to go to seed and they come back. He will run his rototiller down the middle to separate them into rows, set up stakes and grow the nicest of beans!

Sometimes I worry that IÂm too unimaginative.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Saving Garden Seeds

"Further, and unlike BPgreen, our volunteer tomatoes seldom have time to produce fruit if allowed to grow"

Doh!

I forgot that I was remembering gardening in central Illinois, where the growing season started earlier and ended later.