Tom Tato Lives! Frankensteinian Plant Grows Both Tomatoes And Potatoes

[mr.d]

TomTato lives! Frankensteinian plant grows both tomatoes and potatoes

 

Morgan-Thompson

You say to-MAY-to, they say tom-TAY-to.

NBC NEWS SCIENCE, SEPTEMBER 26,2013-----Britons are booking orders for a double-crop wonderplant called the TomTato, that puts out cherry tomatoes on the vine, while growing whole white potatoes underground.

"It's the perfect marriage," Michael Perry, new product manager at Thompson-Morgan, who is taking TomTato orders for next April, told NBC News. "Why wouldn't someone want to buy one?"

Tomato lovers can chop up the fruit for a season's worth of salads, and then harvest the potatoes at the end of the year, Perry promised.

It sounds crazy, but the science is legit. Tomato and potatoes are members of the same plant family, which makes them ideal candidates for being grafted together. That's how the company creates their new line, and a technique fruit growers and horticulturists have been using for centuries

[lavender]

I haven't seen this particular graft in the catalogs yet but there are more and more grafted veggies appearing. Usually they are grafting the more delicate hybrids onto stronger root systems. 

[Petee]

$25 for one plant?

[lavender]

http://downtoearthgardenclub.org/2013/02/grafting-vegetable-plants/    I think it was discussed at one of Penn State's Master Gardener classes. Got me interested and I checked it out. it made an interesting newsletter article. Something different. 

[Petee]

Since potatoes and tomatoes are cousins anyway they are grafted into one plant. Late Blight can kill them both at the same time.

 

It's like when they graft 5 different kinds of apples onto the same root stock. Pears can go onto apple root stock too if you know the right procedure.