Got a love of gardening and a hankering for fast food? Innovative Brits have created a way to combine the two.
U.K.-based horticulture company Thompson & Morgan has developed a plant that grows both cherry tomatoes and potatoes – meaning you can get your homemade fries and ketchup fix from a single source.
The product was first announced in 2013, and now it's finally commercially available.
Dubbed the TomTato plant, it's the result of more than a decade of work. Apparently tomatoes are members of the potato family (who knew?), allowing this plant to be produced without genetic modification, but rather by grafting tomato and potato plants together at the stem. Each plant is grafted by hand.
"It has been very difficult to achieve because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work," Thompson & Morgan director Paul Hansord told BBC.
The grafting technique works by cleanly cutting the stems of the two plants and taping them together at the ends until they heal.
Though the TomTato plant is gaining widespread attention, a similar product called the Potato Tom has been quietly available in New Zealand for a few years now.
And while the TomTato plant is billed as a convenience product, it's not so convenient for Canadians – it's currently only for sale in the U.K.
Meanwhile, we're still waiting on Tomacco.
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