"DIY TomTato - Grafting Tomatoes onto Potatoes 2014"

I picked my first Tomtato today, I got three sungold and they tasted just as good as the normal plants I'm growing.

To recap I've got three Tomtatoes in the greenhouse with various scions: Sungold, Floridity, Black Cherry and Gardeners Delight. They look very similar to my normal tomato plants, just a bit behind in terms of growth, but plenty of fruit set. I can also see the potato tubers at the top of the soil, so I've had to earth up. They look very promising, here's the fruit from the Tomtato on the right compared to that from a normal plant on the left:

 

Outdoors I've got a couple of Tomtatoes, this time using Manx Marvel as scions. They are really strong/stocky plants with loads of fruit forming. They will probably be a week or two yet before I get any ripened, so no idea on taste as yet:

This is them in a cold frame in front of normal potatoes:

 

Well it's been around 8 to 12 hrs since I ate them and I'm still not dead yet, have to up the dose next time

Me neither

 

I hope so Kristen, I'm sure I've read that a small number amateurs have been grafting tomatoes onto potatoes for years with no reported problems, can't recall where I got that information from though (errr first sign of solanine poisoning!)

 

I've had to harvest my two outdoor TomTato plants today. They had blight so I picked off the remaining fruit, and dug up the spuds underneath. These are Manx Marvel tomato scions on Maris Peer potato roots.

The remaining fruit was mostly unripe (weighed: 1.464kg), they have given me a reasonable yield for outdoor plants:


The potato harvest was not so good, a measly 0.52 kg per root (picture show one root's worth):


Then I dug up a few of the adjacent normal (non-grafted) potato plants, again these are Maris Peer and the yield of these was much worse, averaging only 0.3 kg per root (picture show one root's worth):


So these outdoor TomTato plants outperformed 'normal' potatoes by some 70%. Although I'm none too happy with the yield of either. I'm putting it down to the soil/bed, it only gets a couple of hours of sunshine in the morning and it's full of tree roots.


These outdoor TomTatoes were very much an afterthought, I'm much more hopeful for the greenhouse TomTatoes. These are still growing strongly and I'm picking lots of tomatoes off them, plus they are getting a lot more TLC than the outdoor ones I just left to the elements.

I won't be digging up the indoor TomTatoes for some time yet, maybe the end of October if this good weather holds out.

 

Well I finally got round to harvesting the Greenhouse Tomtatoes. The plants were starting to succumb to botrytis and whitefly was the final straw so they had to go. The tomato crop has done very well, I got more than my normal plants growing along side. Also they kept cropping much longer. Here's my final picking:



The potatoes were a much better yield than my outdoor ones, ranging from 1 to 1.5 kg per plant (2.2 to 3.3 lbs), twice the amount I got from the outdoor normal potato crop. However they were just as scabby as my outdoor ones, I'm putting that down to poor watering and bad choice of variety, next year I won't be using Maris Peer.

One roots worth, around 2.5 lbs:


The best root, around 3.3 lb:


So all in all I'm quite pleased with the trial. The above ground part, the tomatoes, were very strong growing and out-yielded my normal plants. The under-ground part, the potatoes, are just a bonus really.

 

No after effects Zigs

Well remembered Zigs, thing is my Pink Fir Apple and early spuds were really clean (not scabby) so I'm hoping a different main crop variety will be better.