I think somebody is pulling somebody's leg ;-)

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and potatoes are all in the nightshade family, but they are self-pollinated. They will not cross.

Just the other evening a young worker at our local Lowe's said his father thought that planting a tomato and a hot pepper right up next to each other would possibly create spicey tomatoes. I told him, too, to tell his father that it wouldn't work. Wonder where this all started.

interesting...I grew an orange tree next to an apple tree and the orange tasted like an apple. HEHE,,sorry for the pun..not makin fun,,but no..like trudi stated they can not cross pollinate..if ya had money on it...ya won cats..

happy gardening..

can't you graft several of the varietes betwixt each other, making somewhat of a hybrid, in a way?

pepper root, tomato top, and so on.

Bible pretty well sets the organic laws of nature in "after their own kind". There are in nature "life barriers" which keep species from reproducing with other species unless certain chemicals are introduced to break that barrier in the amino acid field.

And yet- Potatoes and tomatoes have been crossed several times in the past, by people trying to get plants with potatoes under the ground-with tomatoes on top of the plant.

Heck tomatoes don't even cross prolifically with eachother, never mind with peppers.

I bet if you asked those same people, if growing a hot pepper next to a sweet bell would make the bell pepper turn hot, they'd say yes it makes it hot.

And yet- Potatoes and tomatoes have been crossed several times in the past, by people trying to get plants with potatoes under the ground-with tomatoes on top of the plant.

*****

While it's true that a tomato can be grafted onto a potato stock root, as well as a Jimson stock root, for instance, that's a vegetative graft and not crossing in the sense that it's a sexual cross pollination involving the sexual organs of both of the grafted parts.

And what's being discussed here is a sexual cross pollination.

You can't even graft together tomatoes and peppers let alone haivng them sexually cross.

Carolyn

I grew some of my tomatoes next to my peppers last year. They were no hotter than the tomatoes I grew in another garden.

Oh, and my potatoes were on the other side of the tomatoes. They were neither hot nor tomato-y. ;)

Mike

When I started my very first garden 15 years ago, other, more experienced gardeners told me not to plant hot peppers in with the bells, that it would make them hot. Since DH and I don't eat hot peppers, I never had a chance to test out that advice. Thanks for educating me!

Bonnie

The 'flesh' of a tomato is entirely the tissue of the 'mother' plant, only the seeds carry possibly mixed genetic material.

This is true of peppers, as well as any other vegetable/fruit that contains seeds, but if sweet and hot peppers should cross-pollinate, the seeds/membranes of the sweet pepper CAN be hot! But this is a moot point, because peppers and tomatoes are too genetically different to cross...if it could happen, somebody'd be selling pomatoes or teppers or such already!

THe only exception to this rule I can think of is corn, since what we eat IS the seed, that's why there's all the complicated pollination rules when different classes of sweet corn are planted together, or sweet corn is planted in pollination range of feed corn.

I've seen those advertisements for potato/tomato plants and always laughed. I'm amazed to read that there is "some" truth to the idea. Even so, I've always believed that anything that does 2 things does neither one well.

Anyway, I grow my potatoes in containers. Harvesting is so simple. Dump out the container and pick the potatoes out of the dirt. No digging!