Purple and Green Tomatillo

The variety of tomatillo (Physalis ixocarpa) I grow has purple and purple/green fruit, I keep thinking I should get a dark purple variety but don’t seem able to find a source for them.  I also think about getting one with larger fruit as tomatilloes are a bit small.

The variety I grow are great, they are high yielding, pest and disease free, and relatively sweet, plus I have grown this variety and saved its seeds for so many years that I find getting rid of them to be a rather daunting concept.

Tomatillo

Around ten years ago I bought some purple tomatillos from a market, they weren’t dark purple, more of a purple/green. Back then tomatillo were pretty rare, seeds were difficult to find, you never saw seedlings for sale, and very few home gardeners around here had even heard of them.

I put a few of these fruit in a paper bag and took them home, we ate some and I kept the larger and darker ones to save seed. This is how/when I got my variety, they were an un-named variety that I found at a market stall.

At that time I had never grown tomatillo before that, I had never seen a plant, I wasn’t sure they could survive in my climate, I didn’t know how to save their seed, and I didn't know anyone who had seen or grown one. Luckily it was all really simple.

Every time I grow tomatillo now I save some seeds for future years, if you ever grow tomatillo you should also save some of the seeds.

If you only wanted a few seeds you could just pick them out of the fruit and dry them somewhere. The way I save tomatillo seed is to crush up the fruit in a container of water, for larger numbers I use a potato masher to crush them.

Viable seeds sink, I remove the large parts of the flesh by hand, I tip off some of the water along with anything that floats, and then tip whatever is left through a strainer. I put the seeds on some baking paper (which has been labelled with the name and date) and leave them somewhere safe to dry. Once dry I store the seeds as normal, apparently they can remain viable for many years.

Honey bees appear to like tomatillo flowers

Growing tomatillo from seed is also simple. Much like tomatoes they don’t like frost. In spring I get a punnet of soil and sprinkle on some seeds, I water this. I don’t bury the seeds, I just sprinkle them and water them in. I don’t know if they need sunlight to germinate, or if burying them is fine, but I get good results just sprinkling and watering. From here I water them and protect them from snails etc. Not surprisingly, they seem to like warm soil and plenty of sunlight.

Tomatillo grow reasonably fast and tall, they can reach 5 foot tall in a season without too much trouble. They can be left to sprawl wherever they want but to make harvest easier, and to save garden space, it is best to stake them. I water tomatillo plants the same as I would water tomato plants, nothing overly special needs to be done.

Tomatillo appear to be only partially self-fertile, so to get a crop it is best to plant several plants. You can save space by planting two or more plants in the same hole and treating them as one plant. They are very productive when grown like this so try not to overdo it. Two or three plants is often more than productive enough for a family.

I only grow one variety of tomatillo, and none of the neighbours grow tomatillo, so I don’t need to worry about isolating to keep my strain pure.  If I grow a second variety I will either bag the flowers or grow them alternate years. By the looks of the flowers, and the number of insects that visit them, I assume they cross pollinate readily. 

Tomatillo produce ample flowers

For me tomatillo always start to flower early in the season, and the early flowers always abort. It may be different for you, but they always do this for me. They keep flowering, honey bees and native insects appear to like the yellow flowers, but the flowers keep aborting. This goes on for what seems like an eternity, and then one day they produce fruit. Once they start, they produce large amounts of fruit until the frosts kill them.

Much like tomatoes or chillies, tomatillo are perennial and can be grown for several years if protected from frost. I allow frost to kill them and plant new seed each year because it is simple and I doubt I would get an earlier crop anyway.

When the husk starts to dry and split that is when I pick them. Usually they fall from the plant when ripe, but sometimes they need to be picked. The papery husk seems to protect tomatillo from fruit fly even in heavily infested areas.

Once picked you can eat the fruit or store them or save their seed for next year. Tomatillo plants produce an abundance of fruit over the season, so mashing a few to save seeds from is not an issue.

If the stems are slightly damaged they produce roots.  It is interesting, and a little creepy.  If a bug damages a stem it starts to grow roots, if a stem brushes against something and gets bruised it grows roots, if this touches the soil it gains nutrients and water the same as any roots.

tomatillo stem producing roots

When I first got my tomatilloes no one had them.  These days a few places sell tomatillo seeds, and there are even a few different varieties around.  There are no blue tomatilloes, they don't exist, don't waste your money on them.  There are varieties of green, purple, yellow, and orange tomatillo. 

I sell seeds from my purple and green tomatillo through my for sale page.