Search for Tomatillo plants

AT the last minute I have decided to grow a few tomatillo plants cause my husband loves tomatillo sauce. But for the life of me, I cannot find any plants locally and found one place that sold plants on the internet.
Any ideas where i can find plants for sale?
I have to put these things on the tomato list for plant sales next year. It might be a good seller.

http://northerntropics.mybisi.com/product/tomatillo-plants-make-green-salsa-husk-tomato

They grow SO FAST my suggestion would be to buy seeds. in less then a month you will have plants ready to go in ground. You can direct sow but they like heat to germinate so if the soil isn't hot (like peppers germinate) they can be really slow to germinate I've read 30 days. I just sowed some and they were up in a day and a half. I up potted some that were 1 month old and a few broke, because they were too big. I normal pot them up at 2-3 weeks.

They produce later in the season and you need more then 1 plant as they are not self fertile. They are easy to grow in ground or in containers and will readily self sow.

I ordered 4 green plants and 4 purple.
The shipping cost was more than the plants.
I was afraid it would be too hot for pollination to germinate if I ordered and waited for seed and then waited for them to mature. I would have to wait about 18 wks for berries if I ordered seed. (impatient)
They are definitely on my seed list for next year.
I knew they had to have another plant to cross pollinate and when I googled it I found out that the flowers actually attract bees to the area so even if one didn't eat the berries, it would lure bees to the garden.

Thank you for helping me out. I did not know they were slow to germinate. I am glad I have heat mats. I will treat them like pepper plants when it comes to germination and care.

I have read they are slow to germinate, BUT that has never been my experience. I dont know about the heat and pollination they are basically a weed in Mexico so they take care of themselves. Ive read to not water them until they get dry. I sell the plants at 4-6 weeks and they are BIG. I dont know how much time youll cut off by ordering plants. You may want to do a DG search to get more info. The packet I have says DTM is 70 days BUT Ive read they dont produce until the end of the season, so I dont know.

I have 5 varieties growing. The quickest showed a sprout in 8 days. The slowest to show a sprout was 14 days and individual seeds, of that variety which I planted 3/13, were still coming up yesterday. Compared to tomatoes, they are a little slower, more like peppers.

This message was edited Apr 13, 2012 12:22 PM

See my posting below. I confused myself and I'm talking about eggplant here.

This message was edited Apr 13, 2012 1:37 PM

Did you have them on a heat mat or warm room? Ive sold mine 1 month after sowing, but I dont direct sow. What kind are you growing I didnt realize there were 5 types.lol I grow purple. Also you can plant them deep like a tomato. They will root all the way up the stem. I start them with my peppers, because as you pointed out, they require similar conditions. I keep them as close to the lights as possible, so they dont get too leggy but if they do I just bury the stem.

Ask Ozark about tomatillos, his experience will make you laugh.

I'm sorry I'm talking about eggplant. I was responding to another thread on another site had to go do something else. swapped to this the tab that had this thread and totally confused everyone, myself in particular. I haven't started my tomatillos yet because I think it will be about a month or before I can put them out even with this warm spring and I didn't want them too big. I plan on starting some this weekend. I have purple ones, but I never got around to getting any seed for green ones and I hate to pay the shipping on just one packet of seed.

Are the green ones you buy from the store ripe enough to have viable seed?

ROTFLMBO sorry Doug Im so glad other people do the same things I do. I dont think you confused many people. The thread is still short and all the info is accurate for Tomatillos and EP.

What Kind of EP are you growing? I have found the key to growing EP is to keep the seeds moist. I mist them, with a sprayer but yes they take longer. IMHO it seems a litttle early to strart tomatiools in your zone but the worst that could happen is that you would have to start them again, and thats not too bad. They like hot soil, hot everything.
I dont think Cricket would mind if we go off topic because her question has alreadty been answered.

I have no idea about the seeds from the store bought ones you could try it, it would be a cheap experiment.

If figured I was going to start 3 or 4 seeds tomorrow and see what happens. I was also going to start some around May 1 with the intention of putting them out June 1. Is my thinking that 4 weeks from planting seed to planting out is about right? I have extra seed because Nichols accidentally sent me an extra pack.

As for eggplant, I've started Apple green, Black Beauty, Casper, Diamond, and Swallow. I bought the seed for all of them in 2010 and never got them planted as my work changed and I ran out of time. The Apple green and Casper I had germination problems with, both low and slow.

for some reason I was not receiving an update on my own post.

I want to read what yall had to say but first i wanted to say that my plants arrived and were healthy but needed water quickly. They came in the cell pack that they were grown in and each plant had it's own tag and it was packaged very well. I got them transplanted into 6 inch pots cause I don't know when I will get them in the garden yet cause it's not ready yet. The plants are about 6 inches tall and some are showing tiny bloom buds.

Crickets, If they grow too fast before the garden in ready, they can go into large pots. I grew some large plants that way, though there was no harvest as you may have read in thread I posted. I hope I didn't step on your toes. I felt like posting in this thread would be "taking it over" and I didn't want to do that.

I hope your garden is ready soon. It's supposed to be in the low 90's here by the weekend. And I don't care about it being a Dry Heat, it's still dang hot!

David

No problem David. All is good.


I actually have a 4 x 10 bed "frame" ready. I just have to get someone to pick up a bale of peat moss for me. (have sandy soil) I already have compost manure, some chicken barn soil, and some rabbit manure.
I have plenty of pots but would still need that peat moss and I rather use the garden. It's a waiting process no matter what.

The only time I can go shopping is in the evening and by that time the Co-Op that has 3.8 compressed bales of peat moss is closed.

Never put a $10 plant in a $1 hole.
Put a $1 plant in a $10 hole.

That's good advise. That's about the size of my bed. Plus I have a couple frames at about 4 by 4. I am envious of the space some gardeners have. Then again, if I lived in a more rural area I probably wouldn't be able to bike to the supermarket:)

David

Uh, only because ya'll were talking about eggplants and germination. I used IHORT plugs on April 6th to sow 5 varieties of eggplants.

These pics are on April 17th...

did it take 11 days for them to germinate?
Are all those plants just for you?
I love eggplants. I helped mine pollinate today.

Cricket,
Yes,
Mostly, yes, and
I do too! I didn't help mine pollinate.

Those IHORT plugs are the bomb, girl. Soooooooooooooooo easy to pick up a plug, drop a seed in and put the plug into the tray cell. After the true leaves, Can just pot up the whole (biodegradeable) plug into the next pot, or, straight out to the garden with the seedlings.

Can you say, "no more potting mix all over the kitchen in the chill of winter?"

LOL, no i cant say no more mix in the kitchen during winter. That is where I sow at least a hundred flats of seeds. I have never used the IHORT plugs but i do like the peat pellets for some of my own personal plants when I just need a few.

Until I joined DG I never realized how many other people used their kitchens and utensils for gardening. Now that the rush is winding down I'm going to finally start removing seeds packets from my kitchen table. LOL

Im amazed at the cooler temps, they really have slowed down the plants' growth. During those few weeks of warmer weather everything was growing sooo fast I can really tell a difference.

It was great when the cold front blew through this morning, the temp dropped about 15* and we had one thunderstorm roll in with about a 1/2" rain.

GG>> Is this the first time you've used the IHORT plugs, and what makes them so special?

Cricket>> This was the first time I'd done any seed sowing and like the peat pots myself. Myself and the grand daughter sowed some WM seeds in the Jiffy Tomato Peat Pellets and couldn't believe how quickly and deeply the roots hit the bottom of those pellets.

Sorry, kind of off topic...

kev- go to the seed starting thread in this forum. I think we are on # 3 now but the story behind them is there starting at Seed starting #1. You kind of need to read or at least skim the whole thing, I dont know if it would be possible to condense the whole story in to 1 post at this point. LOL

Thanks Lisa, there is very little on this site that gets condensed into 1 post...LOL..

YOU said it, not me. LOL But it really is a long interesting story. There is so MUCH important, useful information.