These were quite a novelty 30 years ago. Springhill stuck an ad in a lot of newspapers. Thiers was the Subarctic tomato grafted onto a Red Norland root. It is possible to graft tomatoes on most potato plants. They are not crossed or grow from seeds, it is purely a grafting activity. Not too practical, but gets attention as a novelty.

I wouldn't dig the potatoes until at least a day or two after every last tomato plant has been pulled up and bagged and put in the trash. This is because when you dig the potatoes, you need to let them air dry for a while to dry the skins before you put the potatoes into storage. There are differing recommendations as to how long you have to leave them out in the open air, but during this time your infected tomato plants will be releasing millions of Late Blight spores into the air. Those spores are going to float around your garden on air currents and a lot of them will land on the potatoes you just dug. Then when you put the potatoes into storage with their cargo of Late Blight spores, the spores will grow and you'll have a mess of rotting potatoes. I would wait until all the tomato plants are long gone.

in 1965 the first short stigma varieties were developed. These were mostly put into modern hybrid breeding lines, but if you look closely, after several bees have bite-buzzed a tomato blossum to extract pollen the anthercone shrinks back from the damage exposing the stigma even on short stigma varieties. I do not know where the myth that potato leafed varieties cross pollinate more than regular leaf varieties came from other than that the short stigma varieties are/were RL, but that still leaves a lot of RL varieties out there that are not ancestors of the short stigma breeding lines. It is just easier to tell that your PL plant has been cross pollinated because you can see it as soon as the true leaves develop. When you are growing red RL varieties you usualy can't tell if they have been cross pollinated because the visible traits are all dominant (no matter what you cross with a red RL plant you will get red RL offspring the next year --unless it crossed with a cherry, which is also dominant). What is the rate of cross pollination? It depends on your area. I have a lot of bees, and in mid season I have about 20% of the seed from any one tomato crossed. This is an average of fruits showing from 0% to over 40% crossed seed, with the probability of crosses with like-leaved plants factored in (PL plants being crossed with other PL plants). My grow outs with a very small sample size indicate that a single blossom can get pollen from multiple other plants/varieties growing several feet away, so crowding/touching plants is not an issue. Bagging is simple, go to the Walmart party/wedding/fru-fru section and get a 12 pack of 4.5"x6.5" drawstring sachets (I bought some last night for $5/pack), and place them over trusses of unopened buds. You might have to pinch off the first opened flower. I find it easier to turn the sachets inside out so that the protruding cuff doesn't get in the way so much. Once you see fruits form, tie a brightly colored string around the truss to mark it and then sterilize the bag before using again. I drop them in boiling water for a minute or two, some people run a hot steam iron over them. That will kill any remaining pollen from the last plant. For peppers it is easier just to buy organza/tule netting at the Walmart fabric counter and bag entire branches or small plants.

Patrina, Yes. If you pollinate "Golden Jubilee" with a mixture of pollen from "Yellow Pear" and "Roma". Some of the seeds would grow plants of the hybrid "Golden Jubilee" X "Yellow Pear", and some would grow plants of the hybrid "Golden Jubilee" X "Roma". Each seed would have only one pollen parent but it could be either of the two used. In this case, the fruit color of these offspring hybrids would allow you to distinguish between them. To complicate matters when using mixed pollen, some pollen grains will grow faster than others. This "pollen competition" could result in one pollen parent having an advantage. The majority of the seeds would then come from the more competitive of the two (or more) pollen parents. Many hybridizer's often use mixed pollen hybridizations when they aren't very concerned with exact parentage. In my opinion, you can use this strategy to lower the number of unproductive crosses (less chance of incompatibilities being a problem) and to maximize percentage of vigorous offspring (since the most vigorously growing pollen tubes will win the race to the ovules). Have fun and let us know how things turn out. Tom