Saturday 12 October 2013

Weird plants!

Don't know if you've seen this in today's Times newspaper, so I thought I'd share it with you -


Now it's a shame it's not April 1st, I'd be more inclined to believe this!  They're calling it a TomTato.  According to the newspaper, Thompson and Morgan have been up to some ingenius grafting, grafting a tomato onto a potato, or is it grafting a potato onto a tomato.  Anyway, apparently once your tomatoes have grown and produced fruit, you've consumed said fruit, then you dig up the potatoes and hey presto, you have potatoes to eat too.

Now I can see where this may come in useful - only one plant to buy therefore hopefully saving money, space saving in smaller plots/gardens; and yes I know tomatoes and potatoes come from the same 'Solanum' family, but I can't help thinking that I prefer my crops separately, surely one tub of potatoes and one plant of tomatoes doesn't take up that much room, does it?

I must admit though it is clever, will it take off?  Who knows.


3 comments:

  1. Saw this on TV a few weeks ago, we wondered if it was Aprils 1st too!

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  2. It's mad, do you think anyone will take them up on it and grow some?

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  3. I'm always very wary of this sort of meddling with nature. I did have a grafted tomato plant for the first time this year, two different types of tomato on one root stock and it did amazingly well, and very tasty, but maybe this tomato/potato is a step too far!

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