Salad days for Hull sewage works

These tomatoes are growing in old toilet paper and rags

Dozens of tomato plants have taken root at a sewage works in East Yorkshire.

Staff at the Hull sewage works said it is not uncommon for the odd tomato plant to grow at a treatment works, but this year they have a bumper crop.

The tomatoes have mostly sprouted in skips of toilet paper that has been removed at an early stage of the treatment process.

Tomato seeds are not digested by the human body and so pass through our systems unscathed.

Yorkshire Water said above average temperatures and high levels of rainfall had contributed to the large number of plants.

Most of the seeds are removed from the waste water as sludge which is then dried and turned into compost. This has led to regular stories of rogue tomato plants appearing in farmer's crops.

David Renshaw, of Yorkshire Water, said: "People needn't worry about us supplying any big-name supermarkets any time soon as the plants either die of natural causes or are invariably destroyed when skips full of waste are removed from our sites."