Now You Can Get Your Ketchup and Fries from One Plant

Here in the northeastern United States, we're still deep in the grips of a seemingly sub-Arctic winter: It feels like every time I look out my window, these days, some soul-crushing mixture of snow, sleet, and ice is raining down from the skies. Unfortunately, earlier this month Punxsutawney Phil—this year's iteration of the groundhog celeb, not the one that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio may or may not have killed last February—predicted six more weeks of nerve-deadening slog. But the frigid temperatures of mid-winter haven't stopped eager home gardeners from plotting out their spring plantings, and this year, they'll have a tantalizing new option to grace their backyard plots: a hybrid plant that grows both tomatoes and potatoes at the same time.

Cheekily named Ketchup 'n' Fries, the new offering from SuperNaturals Grafted Vegetables LLC hits gardening stores and websites in April. As the company's name indicates, this Franken-vegetable is a graft, or fusion, between a cherry tomato plant and a russet potato plant. Once installed in a home garden or pot, the tomatoes grow above ground while the potatoes grow below. The produce matures at the same time, so home cooks can simultaneously crisp up some fries and get a pot of ketchup on the stovetop—or, in the likelier, lazier case, at least slice up some toms for the top of a burger.

And before all you organic-loving, biodynamic cow horn-buriers get up in arms about any GM properties of this plant, rest assured that grafting is an age-old process that has been around since the dawn of agriculture—no modification of genes needed. In the case of Ketchup 'n' Fries, both tomatoes and potatoes belong to the nightshade family, making their unholy-sounding union, well, pretty legit.

Although Ketchup 'n' Fries is new to the US—SuperNaturals announced its stateside launch in December—the two-faced plant has actually been available to UK gardeners since last year, under the name TomTato. Why the name change? I can only speculate that the British company feared that Americans would not know what to do with potatoes other than turn them into fries.

Although the tomato-potato hybrid is a perfectly functional plant, some were quick to mistrust the TomTato when it was announced last year. None other than funnyman Stephen Colbert, in fact, deemed the plant fit for inclusion his Colbert Report segment "The Craziest Fucking Thing I've Ever Heard."

"What you're about to see may cause you to fertilize your pants," Colbert warns in the video. "The only time tomatoes and potatoes should meet is at the bottom of a styrofoam clamshell," he opines.

Even SuperNatural's Alice Doyle is inclined to admit that the new plant, although potentially delicious, is a little odd.

"It's like a science project," she told NPR's The Salt. "It's something that is really bizarre, but it's going to be fun [for gardeners] to measure and see how it grows."

Sounds like a grand old time. But until Mother Nature loosens her icy death grip and the ground thaws, we'll stick to being normal shlubs and getting our fries from fast-food joints—not from the earth.