Potato Tomato Space Savers

Potato Tomato Space Savers

Online Magazine

Potato Tomato Space Savers

Free Garden Tips 

Potato Tomato Space Savers

Potato Tomato Space Savers

Potato Tomato Space Savers
Potato Tomato Space Savers
Potato Tomato Space Savers

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Online Magazine

Potato Tomato Space Savers

By Robert Laurence

Here's a novelty we can't recommend unless you're willing to take the risk. Nevertheless, tomatoes and potatoes can be grown on the same plant, their roots intertwined. Just raise your tomato seedlings as you normally would and then transplant the seedlings into one-inch holes filled with soil that you have made in whole seed potatoes (sprouting potatoes or potatoes with "eyes" will do). Lay the potatoes in a shallow flat filled with soil and wait until the tomato roots grow through the potatoes and into the soil. When transplanting the tomatoes to the garden, set the plants (potatoes and all) in one foot deep holes in rich garden soil. This novelty is certainly a space saver, yielding tomatoes on the plant above ground and potatoes below. (The potato plant will also send up vines, of course.) The chief drawback is that potatoes can transmit several diseases to tomatoes, and vice versa, which is the reason potato fields on farms are always widely separated from tomato fields. We had no such trouble though, luckily. If you have an out of the way area available you may want to experiment. Many such experiments have been made with tomato plants. At North Carolina State University, for example, tomatoes were grafted on tobacco plant roots. The result was a tomato with high nicotine content! One of the earliest experiments with tomatoes, in 1919, produced a tomato eggplant chimera having characteristics of both parents on the same branch.


 
 
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Potato Tomato Space Savers