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Top of the crops

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Much like the Wombles, plants are overground, underground, and taking up space in one, without generally doing much of use in the other.

Not any more.

News came in this week that green-fingered boffins have created a Frankenplant, which is tomato up top, and yummy spuds in the muddy stuff underneath.

Before those of a sensitive disposition start fearing that this is one of those genetically modified plants, and we’re just a short step away from Triffids turning the tables and having us for lunch instead of the other way around, fear not. This ‘Tomtato’ plant (see what they did there? Heh!) is in fact not the product of some cellular-level fumbling, but actually harnesses the long established process of splicing, whereby you take two different plants, chop them up, and stick the bits together. Preferably the bits you want, if at all possible.

It sounds simple, and I even possess one, although admittedly it is two varieties of apple on the same tree, which unsurprisingly is as freaky as it sounds to look at, especially when one variety of fruit is red, and the other one green.

This lab-coat induced new hybrid took a fair bit of work apparently, as making two different bits of plant work together is not dissimilar to supergluing Cameron and Milliband to each other, shoving them in a darkened room, and assuming they’ll be best mates in no time.

Think of the space that can be saved. Now you can grow two crops in the same patch of ground, and in this case, you’re half way to a nice salad.

As a keen haughty... hortycolt... gardening person myself, I can see much potential in this concept, and hope to get twice as much out of my allotment in the near future, if only I can be bothered to dig it over, get rid of the weeds, and go there occasionally.

So I have some suggestions for the Splicers, that I’d like them to get onto as soon as possible:

The Applegette: Up top, we’ll have lovely apples, whilst at ground level courgettes will spring forth. True, this will make your average apple tree look like it’s got feet and is about to march upon your town, destroying all in its path, but you really shouldn’t be so paranoid.

Beetnanas: Everyone likes bananas (except me) and beetroot, so let’s put the two together. Better still, what about the bananas being purple? Then everyone could hate them, not just me.

Raspbegarlic: All the deliciousness of raspberries, with the benefit of multi-purpose garlic nestling below ground, plus the added advantage of knowing your soft fruit will be unaffected by sudden vampire attacks.

Celersprout: Celery is hideous, stringy, salad-ruining, pointlessness, and sprouts have all the repellent nature of cabbages, condensed into a smaller area. The advantage of this one is that ‘accidentally’ trampling on them would only take half the usual time.

I’m exhausted thinking about this. I wonder if a nice cup of Teacoff will help.

This post first appeared in my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail on the 4th of October 2013. You can view the version used by the paper here, where it had "Frankenplants are" added to the front of the title, and saw a couple of trims reduce it's length by 22 words.

This one was firmly in my writing territory, and came fairly easily. I seem to have a choice of subjects already lined up for next week, but might wind up using none of them. We'll see...

(Compilation CDs continue: today I'm on "Music of the Millennium 2", which is a bit of a cheeky title, as it features nothing before the sixties, and only 'popular' music, but I might be verging on the pedantic here, so I'll stop.)
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