TomTato combines two plants in one

[Barrycdog]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tomtato-combines-two-plants-into-one-231215239.html

My only question is I know the potato leaves are poison. Of course I haven't eaten tomato leaves either but I would assume the combination can't be good. Tomatoes contain lyprocene that give the tomatoes the red pigment. It makes since the potato would be red but never seen one.

 

[James B White]

I figured they'd be grafted, and sure enough that's what he said around :58. They're closely related, so they'd graft okay. The "rootstock" wouldn't affect the tops or vice versa, so the tomato leaves would still be tomato leaves (and of course poisonous) except they'd provide nourishment to the potatoes, and the potatoes wouldn't be affected by the red color of the tomatoes, except their roots would feed the tomatoes.

It would take a very fertile soil, and I wonder what happens when the potatoes are ready? Do you just sneak a few carefully out the side like new potatoes, hoping not to damage the roots so you can get more tomatoes? Or do you pull the whole thing up like he demonstrated and lose the rest of your tomatoes for the year?

They've basically taken a very old idea and marketed it with new hype. Here's an article mentioning a "pomato" plant being hyped in 2007: http://voices.yahoo.com/grow-own-amazing-pomato-plant-tomatoes-the-223101.html

But it's older than that. After a description on how to graft melons, the Magazine of Horticulture, Botany and All Useful Discoveries says: "This mode of grafting succeeds pretty well; but it has not hitherto been applied to any useful end. Tomatoes may be grafted in this manner on potatoes, and it is said that potato plants thus treated produce good crops both of potatoes and tomatoes." That's from 1835. http://books.google.com/books?id=q_lIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA217

 

[donna]

Can this be moved to the Food Forum?

Very interesting.