The name I know these as is Ground Cherries, but some people do call them husk tomatoes When I was growing up, we called tomatillos husk tomatoes. I am going to assume you have ground cherries since they already have husk cherry fruit on them, and tomatillo usually produces later in the season.

The green husks will fall off the plant when the fruit is almost ripe. Usually they fall while still green, but sometimes turn partly beige before falling off. Once they fall off, you can collect the husks. Wait until the husks turn beige and then remove the fruit from them. It will be a golden-orange colored berry about the size of a small to medium-sized cherry tomato. It can take the husks a week or two to turn from green to beige.

You don't want to remove the fruit from the husk while green or eat the fruit while they are green. First of all, they'll taste bad and, secondly, they are toxic. I don't think they'd kill you, but they might make you ill.

Once they are golden-orange, you can eat them fresh, or can make them into cobbler, pie, jam,jelly or preserves. You can chop them up and add them to fruit salad. There's likely some other ways to use them that I am not aware of.

I am growing both ground cherries and garden huckleberries this year and hope to get enough fruit from the plants to make some jam or jelly from them. I planted several plants of each one and, since they are pretty new to me, I planted some of each in both the front garden and the back garden, and have some in full sun and some in partial shade, so I can figure out what they like the best. I have grown them before, but it was a busy year and I didn't get around to doing anything with the fruit. Some wildlife like the fruit, so if yours starts disappearing you can blame it on the wildlife.

Dawn, thank you for the information. I am a little concerned about it may be toxic. I think my neighbor called it a tomatillo. Mike and I both have very poor hearing so it is hard for us to communicate.

I have built a trellis around the plant and have taken a picture showing almost all the plant, hoping you can get a better view. I am really hoping it is not something that will make a kid or pet sick.

Thanks, Larry

Dawn - those leaves looks like a tomatillo to me. What do you think? In past years - I've had tomatillo's before I had tomatoes. And that fruit looks pretty good sized for a ground cherry.

If it IS a tomatillo - Larry - they are really good roasted (either on the grill or in the oven) and blended into a salsa. The recipe's are all over the net...of you can just prep them to your taster. Remove the husks....roast and remove the skin. Then proceed just like you would a tomatoe salsa preparation. They are really tart but mixed with a chili pepper and spices are definitely worth the effort.

Paula

I'm thinking tomatillos too. Mine, started when I started the tomatos, already have fruit. We cage ours as they will get really big and heavy and can flop over. If tomatillos, you can pick them while they are on the vine after the husks turn tan and the fruit fills the husk. They are tart, (less so when fully ripe) but we love them fresh in salsa or roasted and mixed into guacomole with a mild roasted pepper--the Joe Parkers are perfect. We roast them, freeze them and make quacomole all winter with them. (Thanks to Rick Bayless for this recipe)

My bad. I didn't look at the leaves. :)

I was so focused on making sure Larry didn't harvest his ground cherries green and get sick.

I usually don't grow tomatillos. I grew them one year and they did so well and I was so sick of picking them (and picking them up off them up off the ground) that I don't think I've grown them since.No, wait, I think I grew green and purple ones for a year or two after we moved here. If there is anything that will outproduce happy tomatillo plants, I don't know what it is.

Larry, The first year that I grew them (six plants, because that's how many I raised from seed and I couldn't bear to throw a perfectly healthy plant on the compost pile....which was a mistake), each plant got about 6' tall and 4-5' wide and I only had them staked, not caged, so they flopped all over the place, fell over onto the adjacent rows of tomatoes, etc. buried the path, etc. They turned into a jungle. If I ever grow them again, I'll put them in a great big tomato cage. I kept hoping the plants would die (not because tomatillos aren't good, but because we had too many) and it was an El Nino year with tons of rain and a mild summer and they refused to die. My brother enjoyed them, though, and I was growing them in his sunny garden because my garden was too shady for much of anything in the vegetable family, so he enjoyed them probably more than I did.

I hope you enjoy them. I feel like they are a acquired taste that I just really haven't acquired, which is pretty obvious since I rarely grow them.

I looked at my Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry, Ground Cherry and Garden Huckleberry plants this afternoon and some of them have fruit and flowers on them while still fairly small. They went in late so I wasn't expecting anything from them anytime soon.

There's some sort of native husk tomato that grows along fencelines here every now and then, though not every year.
I've never stopped and looked inside the dried husk to see what is inside....but I think the foliage looks more like a ground cherry than a tomatillo.

Dawn

Thank you, Ladies, this is a new one on me, but it sounds as though I need to build a bigger cage for them.

I am not overly fond of guacamole, but the grandkids are. It will be interesting to grow them.

Larry

Dawn, I have that native plant in my garden, as a weed. They have fruit no larger than a small pea; and, in my opinion, the flavor is insipid.

The tomatillo is vastly superior to the native plant. Here are a couple more tips on how to use these.
1) They are delicious as an ingredient for shish kabobs.
2) The fruit, cut small, make an excellent addition to a stir fry.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Stir fry??? Dang it, George! Ya never told me that! I just grew them for roasted salsa...LOL!!!

I don't know if I have room but I'll bet I find it now. Stir fry, you say...?

I'm growing them this year because my daughter loves salsa verde and would eat it everyday if she could. I plan to make and can a bunch of it for her. I'm glad to know there are other applications besides salsa though.

I wonder how they'd taste mixed into a sandwhich spread, like tuna fish or chicken, even egg salad sandwich spread, perhaps. Mix them with tomatoes or re-fried beans or meat on a taco or in a burrito... Sounds like they'd go with jalepenos, too.

Au gratin potatoes with a few roasted tomatillos on top might work, mebbe. Slip a couple into a salad, here and there, mebbe.

Oooo. My taters and eggs recipe! They'd work, there.

There are possiblities, there. I hadn't really thought of them, before. Now, I'm gonna have to find some seeds...

No room at all, this year, Mebbe next spring...

I agree with Dawn. I grew them one year and couldn't find any way to use them that I thought tasted good and my family agreed. LOL

Yes, stir fry. They add a nice tang to the meal.
When I tell my wife that I'm going to keep a dozen plants, she says, "Are you sure that's enough?!" It helps that they are long keepers, and that, without refrigeration.

On a side note, I've been hearing about "guerrilla gardening," in which people in urban or suburban settings plant edibles on vacant land, and later return for some of the harvest. The tomatillo, lambs quarters and Sunchoke, are ideal for this kind of application. With tomatillos, if someone grows them in the garden, all they'd have to do is pick up some that get bug eaten, etc. and toss them into that vacant field. Next spring... Presto! "wild tomatillos!"

Actually, when we first lived in Mexico, out in the sierra, that is precisely how I was told that the rural/indigenous cultivated them. They simply weeded out the ones which got in the way. But the others, they let live and produce. If a field didn't have them, they tossed a few out there for next spring.

George

I did some guerrilla gardening on my own property this spring. When I was reading about how to do it, the sites kept saying you needed compost, small seeds and to go to the craft store and buy red potters clay.

I laughed my butt off! I just went outside and dug some up. Worked like a charm! I had pretty flowers and herbs growing all over...Until my husband mowed them down.

does anyone exchange seeds here?
I would love to try the other varieties of this plant fruits.

I may have seed to the Puebla Verde variety by the end of summer. I could share for say $2.50 to cover postage and packaging. But first I'll have to process the seeds.

By the way, welcome to the forum! Tell us a little about yourself.

George