Tomato Experiment

Have you ever seen anything like this? I bought a bag of tomatoes on the vine and grabbed one to chop for a salad. When I cut it open, the seeds were sprouting! It really looked like alfafa sprouts but I hadn't bought any of those in months. My mom happened to be here at the time and as an avid gardener I felt sure she had come across this, but she had not. We did not eat the tomato. It may have been fine but it freaked me out a little. So, the other two tomatoes were left on the counter to 'develop' for a couple of weeks to see what might happen. See below.



You can see the bumps on the tomato's skin where the sprouts were growing and struggling to break through. On the last tomato, Justin sliced tiny holes above a few of these bumps to see if the sprouts would grow out and continue. The did a little, but then dried out and stopped.

The only thing anyone has come up with so far is that perhaps these were organic tomatoes (I would love to buy organic, but can't sacrifice the $ at the checkout) that I bought by mistake and they didn't have chemicals to prevent this sprouting. Let me know if anyone else has an explanation or if you have seen this!