Potatoes with tomatoes

[suee]

I've just read the Garden Organic link on Nick the Grief's reply to 'green mulch'. The info on crop rotation there says you should plant tomatoes with potatoes as they are in the same family. I'm confused now, as all the articles I've read about companion planting say that potatoes are incompatible with tomatoes.
Has anyone grown them together and what were the results?
Thanks,
Sue (now retired!!)

[SueA]

Hi suee,
My book on companion planting says that potatoes & tomatoes are bad together as well. Maybe this is because both can suffer from blight & pass it to one another. I do grow potatoes in a large potato tub & tomatoes in a grow bag only a couple of feet apart in my garden as it's very small & haven't had any problems apart from a bit of blight on the leaves towards the end of the season but it hasn't affected the crops.

[andrewo]

Rule of thumb, is if they're from the same family, avoid growing the together and they will suck your soil dry and be prone to disease. It's okay to grow them near each other, as long as the roots never touch.

[Lesley Jay]

Andrewo I don't follow what you mean. I grow all my brassicas together and they are in the same family.

[andrewo]

I don't know, I just got told never grow toms and potatoes together because they are from the same family.

[Lesley Jay]

As far as I know families should be grown together. Potatoes should not be grown in the ground where tomatoes were growing the previous year because of the risk of disease.

[suee]

See why I'm confused?? I'm planning to separate them. SueA - maybe it makes a difference if you're growing in containers or bags as opposed to in a soil bed that you're going to rotate. This is my first season big time on a major plot of land so I'm no expert but am trying to get it right. Hopefully we'll all benefit from sharing successes (or not!!) later in the year.
Sue X

[Birdie Wife]

Gardening Which? recommends planting families together. Maybe it makes rotation easier?

[nick the grief]

It does BW. mind you having said that I assume the reason this might be suggested is that Tomatoes & spud could be wiped out if there was a bad case of Blight, but as most folks grow toms under Glass this sn't usually a problem

[pigletwillie]

Blight is the reason its prudent not to plant the two together. You run a very high chance of losing two crops in one go.

I have two allotments and grow one on one and one on the other, the polytunnel aside.

As blight has been rampant over the last few years it would be perhaps unwise to grow them together, however, its your choice and you take your own chances.