Opinion: The rise of the Tomtato

Unless you've been on Mars for the last week or so you must have heard about the latest development from UK nursery/seedsmen Thompson and Morgan, the 'Tomtato'. It's even on the BBC you know?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24281192

The pictures show T&M's New Product Development Manager, Michael Perry, holding a plant that looks like a prop from a science fiction film, a tomato plant on top and a clump of large potatoes underneath. There's no sticky tape here, this is no cheap prop for a corny film, this is a new development for the 21^st century vegetable grower!

I say new but the idea behind this new product is nothing new; tomatoes and potatoes are incredibly closely related and can be grafted together, but the Tomtato is the result of 15 years of development and research... my guess is that much of this time has been spent finding tomato and potato varieties that grow well together, grow at a compatible pace, and don't 'pollute' each other's flavours (a problem with early attempts- apparently the tomatoes were vile!). This is a triumph of horticulture.

My horticultural sensibilities were outraged! Here a respectable company has taken a fairly run-of-the-mill (albeit fiddly) process, the art of grafting, and the science of how plants are related to each other and turned it into what... a gimmick? Certainly the young starter plants don't come cheap, and despite T&M pointing out that this is a great space saving plant, suitable for a pot on the patio or in the ground, you can get heavy crops from three seed potatoes in a potato bag (about the size of a dustbin) and delicious and reliable crops of tomatoes from the grafted tomato plants coming onto the market- more expensive than a packet of seeds but the rootstock gives improved performance and disease resistance, and just how many tomato plants do you really need?!

The problem is that I'm missing the point; I'm getting bogged down in gardener's wisdom and not seeing this new plant for what it is, a new and exciting product that has brought a lot of publicity not only to T&M as developers but also to the science of horticulture. Here's something new, different, accessible to the home gardener and the result of good solid horticultural research. The Tomtato won't solve the world's hunger but, along with the development of grafted tomatoes, does draw attention to possibilities for the future of food production both commercially and at home; great work T&M!

Gardeners are already familiar and comfortable with grafted fruit trees on different rootstocks (chosen to alter how the tree behaves) and it does beg the question of what else can be grafted to great use? While plant breeders dabble with their paint brushes to create better yields and disease resistance, will the science of rootstocks spread from the orchards and into other areas of the edibles market?

In the words of the character Fallowfield (played by Kenneth Williams) from the classic 1960s radio comedy Beyond Our Ken, “I think the answer lies in the soil!”

You can follow Michael Perry on Twitter:  @gardening_greek