tomatillos

Hi all,
having never grown these, but planning on them this year, was wondering if any of you could recommend any certain variety? Will be growing them primarily for making salsa, if that helps. Oh, I suppose that I should mention that I am in zone 3/4, but can start them inside anytime. Thanks!

I'd also like to ask how do they differ in use from tomatoes.

Good question Doug! I've always just used tomatoes in salsa, so I would like to know how they differ also! Thanks for asking!

Tomatillos are started from seed and grown the same as tomatoes, but they aren't related at all tomatoes being in the genus Solanum and tomatillos being in the genus Physalis, the same genus as Chinese laterns, the decorative one. Meaning that Tomatillos as with Chinese Laterns have a husk and inside that is the berry that some folks like to use for salsa. They aren't eaten fresh out of hand, just used for salsa.

Many folks find that just unripe almost mature tomatoes are just as good for salsa and there was a tomato variety introduced called Granny Smith which was to be used in that manner and for fried green tomatoes. it wasn't much of a success.

So what you get with tomatillos then are a large berry wrapped in a husk. When the ripen the husk opens and if not picked then they usually fall to the ground at self seed with abandon. Many folks pick them and let them ripen off the vine before they fall.

If you go to Tomato growers Supply online you can see pictures of several tomatillo varieties and see the husk I'm talking about.

Time from setting out the plants to ripeness is usually 75-85 days, depending on weather, etc.

Yes, I grew them once, the variety Pineapple, which doesn't taste like a pineapple at all, LOL, as I said, you don't grow tomatillos for fresh out of hand eating, far from it.

So your choice if you want to grow them or just use unripe regular tomatoes.

If it were me I think I'd be a bit concerned about getting ripe ones in your 3b zone in WY but no more so than getting ripe fruits from late midseason to late tomato varieties in the same area.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn, who mentions there's always your best friend for info, and that's Google. LOL

Thanks for that info Carolyn! Sounds like they aren't necessarily all that important to salsa, and I like my salsa, so may not even bother! Thanks so much! That clarifies alot!

Thanks. I've seen them in stores but didn't really know what to do with them.

That was me, and thought that I was probably missing out on something wonderful. I'll probably start 1 or 2 plants, just to try them and see if I like them. And then I'll give the fruit to my dear sis so she can make salsa, teeheehee!

I did try to grow Tomatillos for 2 years and now I am giving up.
I grow millions of Tomatoes ... but the Tomatillo plant gets huge 6'. Lots of flowers and just a few fruits produced.
Maybe our summer is too hot for them ... even if I think they came from Mexico ...
Flee Betles love this plant.
I may try again in the future ... I love the challenge

Aha, for those of you who plan to set out tomatillo plants you have set out at least two b'c they're self infertile. They can only cross pollinate each other.

Carolyn

I like the purple varieties, especially de Milpa. The flavor is a bit tart. I chop them raw into salads.

I had read that Carolyn, and had forgotten, so I'm glad you mentioned that. Do you know, do they have to be the same variety, or more like apple trees, and it doesn't matter?

Does not have to be the same variety.

Carolyn

I've grown the regular tomatillo verde for several years and I use it for green salsa, my fave. Last year I had the inspiration to add a couple of varieties of green when ripe tomatoes to the mix and I really liked the combo for my salsa. I was growing green zebra and Malakhitovaya Shkatulka, both of which added some sweetness and aciditiy to the mix. Uncooked tomatillos were not tasty IMO. This year I am trialing a new green when ripe tomato, Spears Tennessee Green.
Carolyn is so right about reseeding. If you do not want lots of baby tomatillo plants the following year, remove the fruit from the plants in the fall. And, yes, the plants are larger than most tomato plants. Always fun to try something new.

I haven't had to buy tomatillo seeds for years. Since I grow 3 or 4 plants every year, they're the most common springtime weed in my garden! Fortunately, they're not a problem - they pull out and till under easily. I just transplant 3 or 4 to where I want them and get rid of the rest.

The plants are woody and brittle, and they'll need tying up. I make garden salsa all season, and when I've got tomatillos I add them. I don't know that they make much difference in the salsa one way or the other - they really don't have much flavor. I've noticed that my favorite commercial taco sauce, the green La Victoria brand, doesn't contain any tomatoes - the main ingredient is tomatillos. I think the tomatillos mostly serve as a filler and carry the other ingredients' flavors, though.

If you start seeds indoors, start them at least two weeks after you start tomatoes. Tomatillos grow like weeds and they'll get much taller than tomato plants in the same amount of time. You won't have any trouble with a short growing season, they'll start producing in early summer and keep it up until frost.

Thanks for that info Ozark! I always start my tomatoes inside so that they have a chance to produce well before first freeze. Its nice to know that it won't be a problem with the tomatillos. Also, I didn't realise that the tomatillos will carry the other ingredients flavors. That is super, so if our tomatoes are late producing we can always use the tomatillos!

"Also, I didn't realise that the tomatillos will carry the other ingredients flavors."
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That's it. While it's great to have tomatoes fresh out of the garden as the main ingredient of salsa, I've found that other mildly-flavored veggies will work as well. My garden salsa is dominated by the flavors of onion, cilantro, hot peppers, and seasonings - and with those in command, tomatillos, sweet peppers, or other vegetables can form the bulk of the recipe instead of tomatoes.

I made a real good batch of garden salsa this week out of (you ain't gonna believe this) cucumbers!

I put up too many quart jars of refrigerator pickles last season - you know how the garden cucumber flood comes all at once. They're simply sliced cukes in vinegar with salt, refrigerated not canned, and I've eaten a lot of them with sandwiches but I made too many.

Hungry for garden salsa and having no fresh tomatoes this time of year, I rinsed the brine off a quart of those, chopped them up fine, and added chopped onion, garlic, cilantro, hot peppers, a little lime juice, a little brown sugar, a little olive oil, and some seasoned salt. It turned out great, and I've been enjoying it on tortilla chips!

Yummmyy! Sounds great! So you don't can the cukes, just store them in the fridge? Would they keep that way in a root cellar? That sounds like a great idea and my DMIL has a huge cellar we could store tons of stuff in.

skellog - Look up "refrigerator pickles" on Google, there's lots of information and recipes. They need to be at refrigerator temp, 34 or so degrees, to keep - and I doubt if your root cellar would stay that cold even in a Wyoming winter.

All the info says to keep such pickles in the 'fridge for only 6-8 weeks, so I'm really pushing it by still having them in February. They seem perfectly fresh, though, just not as crisp as they were.

Ozark, hope you don't mind...I had to save your cuke salsa recipe. When it gets super hot in the summer it's sometimes hard to heat hot/cooked food, your salsa sounds like the perfect cooling off dish. Glad you mentioned it!

By the way, skellogg, I think I remember seeing a good/easy recipe for fridge pickles in the DG Cookbook (listed under Extras tab).

Shoe...looking forward to a high of 64º today! Yay!

Interesting thread here. My experience with tomatillos was that when they are being cooked they foam a lot so you need a good sized pot to accommodate for the foam. I'm not sure they are meant to be eaten uncooked.

The fridge pickles sounds like something I will try this season.

Last season an elderly lady whose husband works a plot in my garden gave to me a receipt for Salt Pickles or old fashioned crock pickles.

Salt Pickles
1 cup white vinegar
3 cup water
1/4 cup canning salt
Combine ingredients. and boil for 5 minutes.
Pour over cucumbers that have been placed in a bowl. Put 2 or 3 (heads) of dill in bottom of bowl (flowers) first then place in cucumbers.
Be sue liquid covers cucumbers.
Place Cover over the bowl (I use a dinner plate) & let stand 3-5 days. Then they are ready to eat.
You may have to make more liquid than receipt call for.

This was her receipt verbatim.

Of course the cukes, bowl and the plate have to be clean. I used the largest size Pyrex rainbow bowl and an old thick light brown pottery railroad plate for weight. I made three batches in succession and they set out on my counter top for a month or more before the bowl was empty.

Oh, I did add garlic. these were some of the best pickles I've tasted.

They made four batches and one of the batches went bad. I got a black mold and had to thrown out.

"Ozark, hope you don't mind...I had to save your cuke salsa recipe."
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Shoe, before we got to talking about it here I posted my cucumber-salsa recipe in more detail over in the Recipes forum. Here it is:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1158913/

Now you've got me thinking about it and it's almost lunchtime here. I've only got about a half-pint of that salsa left, so I'm heading for the kitchen now to get out the chips and finish 'er off!

Hah! Chow down! And thanks for the link to the other thread, I'll go take a peek when I come back in for my next break.

T-rockgarden, I' like you, I'd put garlic in your recipe, too. Yummy! Makes me wanna go get some store-bought cukes just to try it. (I assume you sliced the cukes, right?)

Shoe, back out to the wonderful weather!

Shoe, I used small whole regular cukes 4 or 5 inches long as opposed to pickling varieties. To my surprise the small Suyo cucumber about the size of a quarter and maybe 7 or 8 inches long made a firm crisp delicious pickle with no seeds. As you probably know the mature Suyo has very few seeds.

Thanks! I am growing Suyo this year, first time for me but got the seeds (Johnny's, on sale!) because I like the Oriental/long cukes.

Much obliged! I'm hankering for fresh food. (Still thinking of going off and buying some cukes to do your recipe, too!) *grin

Shoe (fresh off a tractor, going back out to admired freshly plowed ground. It's purty!)

Grow the Suyo upright so they will tend toward straight.

I will admit that after cuke season I purchased a dozen fresh small pickling cukes from the HEB grocery store and did the salt pickling thing with great success.

Grow the Suyo upright so they will tend toward straight.

******

I don't, I just let them curl however they want to and they taste the same curled or straight as I see it. LOL

I love Suyo Long and even more so the Lebanese cukes that are also called snake melons or serpent melons. And while they are used as cukes they really are C, melo, the melon species and not C. sativus, the cuke species.

You don't have to peel the Japanese OP's nor the Lebaese ones and that suits me just fine.

Just don't let them get too long, either curled or straight.

Carolyn

Also, known as Burpless cucumbers.

Thanks, T-rock. I like to grow all my cukes on strings or trellis/fence but some will slip by and don't make it up the trellis/strings. It doesn't matter to me if they curl or not; I guess the curly ones I can always send to Carolyn, eh?

Carolyn, do you bother to peel the Suyo "cuke", or is it mild enough to eat as is? Also, I'm thinking since it is C. melo I can grow it in close proximity to C. sativus and not risk crossing, eh? More bang for my buck in close spacing.

Shoe (who had a nice 72* day here, with plenty of sunshine)

Hmmm. I bought "Japanese Long" cucumber seeds this year from Baker Creek, and the descriptions and pictures seem identical with "Suyo". I wonder if they're the same variety.

Shoe, Suyo can be eaten fresh without peeling them, the same as the Lebanese/ Armenian Serpent ones I mentioned above. I try to pick all of them at less than about 1 1/2 ft long when I think they're the most tender, although even longer they stay relatively tender.

You've got my address so you can send me any curly ones. LOL

And no, C. Sativus and C.melo don't cross.

Japanese Long, Suyo Long, Climbing Japanese, all have about the same descriptions so I'd think they are roughly the same.

Have you tried Poona Kheera? That's another grat non-bitter one, from India, and I love that one as well.Rather short and plump and turns a russet color when ripe and the flesh is a really nice white. Tastes great and no peeling. All the places seem to also list Lemon Cuke, but I don't think it's that great at all, just a novelty IMO although for sure some folks like it.

Carolyn, where it got up to 55F here yesterday, water dripping off the roof under the still about 2 ft of snow, but it's supposed to turn wicked again on Saturday with high winds, temps plunging and the possibility of more snow next week. I'm OK, got my chocolate, got my new shipment of nuts from nutsonline, a neighbor is going to CT today, picking up some great wurst for me at Ehmer's in I think Danbury, lots of books to read, more tennis on and decisions decisions about which tomato varieties to grow this summer which you'll also hear about in the next few days; got some new great ones. ( wink)

"You've got my address so you can send me any curly ones. LOL" That'll be a great packing job, could be interesting. And of course I'll make sure it is "hermetically sealed".

I grew Poona Keera a few years back. (pic below) It was pretty tasty but that was a rough growing year so didn't get to sample many. And Lemon Cuke gets grown here every year; found out they need to be picked at the light yellow stage though, once they start turning dark yellow they tend to toughen up.

So, now off to find my tomatillo seeds...could'a sworn I bought some type of big one from TGS last year and never planted them

Shoe

I was just wondering if tomatillo seedlings can be planted deep, like tomatoes. I started some and they are really growing fast and leggy even tho I have done everything the same.

I haven't tried that, but I don't believe the seedlings would form more roots along the submerged stem sections as tomato seedlngs do. Try it with a few and let us know how the experiment turns out! The only caution I've needed to follow with tomatillo plants is to support the more-heavily fruited branches. There is a tendency for the joint to give way at the stem.

" I started some and they are really growing fast and leggy even tho I have done everything the same."
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Yep. The first year I grew tomatillos I started seeds indoors under lights just like my tomatoes, planting seeds six weeks before transplanting to the garden.

Ha! By the time I could plant them out six weeks later the tomatoes were sturdy seedlings 8 or 9 inches tall. The tomatillos were leggy two-foot things sprawling and branching all over the place. It was a mess - it's pretty hard to handle 3" diameter plastic cups with plants like that all entangled with each other.

Like I said above, tomatillos drop so many seeds in the garden I don't have to buy them anymore - I just transplant volunteers that come up. If I were going to start them indoors again, I'd plant seeds only 2 or 3 weeks before they're to go in the garden. As far as the seedlings being leggy and uncontrolled, that's just the way tomatillos are.

I've read that most of the tomatillos used by locals in Mexico aren't planted or cultivated. They're just a weed that comes up in and around corn fields, and that's sure been my experience with them.

Ozark, I did start them way later, like you suggested above :). They are for an order so they need to look nice but I can always start more. Did you start them directly in the cups? I may start others in a 4" nursery pot and leave it at that.

"Did you start them directly in the cups?"
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No. Not knowing better the first time, I treated tomatillos exactly like tomatoes. I planted the seeds in egg cartons, then transplanted them up twice - finally into the plastic cups.

I know now that was all unnecessary. If I was growing tomatillo seedlings for sale, I'd plant the seeds directly into the pot they're going to be sold in. The seeds are so tiny, I'd plant several seeds in each pot then thin them down to one plant after they're up. About 3 weeks after sowing seeds, they'd be attractive 4" or so plants ready for sale.

Then it'd be the customer's problem to deal with the leggy, branchy business that comes next. LOL

OK thanks right now they look like Medusa. Supposed to get to freezing again tonight.

We have grown tomatillos for almost twenty years though we stopped planting them many years ago. As Caroline mentioned, they are not related to the tomato, but rather more like a gooseberry. We do eat them out of hand and use them raw in salsa. They have a very distinct flavor...it is lemony and the texture is crisp, like an unripe plum. So if that agrees with you, you'll like them.

It is more typical to make a salsa by cooking them rather than eating them raw but we use them raw and then can the excess. You have to wash them after removing them from the husk because there is a natural sticky coating to the skin. Store them, with the husk on, in a paper bag in the fridge and they will last a month or more.

Unlike Ozark, we do not tie ours but rather let them ramble. They have a candelabra-like habit that makes them good for sprawling. Bugs don't usually bother them, so they are easy to ignore. I let ours go amid the winter squash last year. Some years they ramble around the okra or through the spent asparagus patch.

Different than tomatoes, tomatillos come up in hot weather but produce fruit in cool weather. They are a good interplant among your petering-out spring veggies. They will not come into their own until the weather cools. Carolyn mentioned that it takes more than one as the are self-sterile, but the time line she gives is really very weather dependent. If you live in a climate where summers are long and hot, like mine, they will grow and grow but produce no fruit until it cools down. Our volunteer crop usually starts appearing in late May or early June but there is no harvest until late September. We then pick lots until the first hard freeze. Even then, the fruits are usable. The don't seem to mind light frost a bit. Though you think of all veggies Mexican as growing in hot weather, tomatillos come from higher altitudes and cooler climates. Again, like its cousin the gooseberry.

I can't recommend a specific variety because ours were planted so many years ago but the smaller varieties are usually preferred by Mexican food aficionados and considered more flavorful. That is the type we grow. Hope this helps.

This message was edited Feb 28, 2011 10:56 PM

Wow! That helped alot! I know with our cooler fall weather coming early, compared to alot of the country, I won't need to start them inside real early, and may just plant them outside and forego entirely the seed sprouting indoors. I can't wait to try them! They really sound wonderful, IMO! I think we're really going to like them.

I will try to remember to take a photo of the husks of our tomatillos tomorrow. There are hundreds on the ground in our garden and they are very recognizable despite numerous snows this winter. Here is a photo of one from a former garden. The husk turns to netting and the tomatillo within stays green and dries like a berry.