I was a bit surprised to see so many husk tomatoes in the mart last week , mostly because I think Italians rarely feed this industrial plant . Obviously I was unseasonable because I ’ve seen a few fancy chicken feed cream stores that offer tomatillo - flavor ice cream , and I will state that it tastes pretty good .
I ’m from California , where the laborious Mexican influence mean that these odd minuscule fruits are quite common . Husk tomato are practically the national veg of Mexico , and everybody there eat up a lot of fleeceable sauce , which is the sauce made with the less sweet versions of the yield . know botanically asPhysalis ixocarpa , they are also identify by several other Romance name , such asPhysalis philadelphica . Northerner tend to call the fruits husk tomatoes , while most folks in Latin America call them Mexican husk tomato , not to be confused with the infamous tamarillo , which is known as the tree tomato . Tomatillos have two well - known sister in thePhysalisgenus : Cape gooseberry , which is like and civilise commercially to a larger extent ; and the charming , orangish Chinese lantern flower .
Husk Lycopersicon esculentum are an one-year craw , similar in refinement to tomatoes , except that the flora are not quite as just at climbing , and they raise their fruits much later in the time of year . While tomato can be pushed to produce fruits in spring , husktomatoesneed a long time of year before they acquire fruit , so one commonly sees these fruits come out in the markets come out in mid - to - late summertime .
The culture of chaff tomatoes in abode garden is usually a issue of manage a fundamentally barbaric specie . Home gardener most often plant husk tomato by tossing some old fruits in the garden bed and rent the seedlings come up when they find like it . The plant is really a pest weed in many area , and so gardener often sort of ruck these plant rather than culture them . I ’ve always grown chaff tomato in crowded clumps , and the crowding has n’t seemed to reduce the yield production , but commercial growers plant the seedling a metrical foot and a one-half apart and maintain 4 foot in between the rows . This craw is really dear for hot and ironic expanse . They arise like sens in Las Vegas , Nev. , but do n’t do as well on the humid coastline here innorthern Italy .
The big deal in polish is that husk tomato plants are not ego - fertile , so there need to be other plants nearby in order for the plants to produce fruits . I remember inflict a consulting client who had a undivided husk tomato plant grow in a big , remains pot . The plant was brilliant and covered with peak but would set no fruit . I work the job by ripping one of the straggly specimens from my own temporary hookup and planting it in a short passel behind the big specimen . Within a few week , the with child male child was moil out fruits and my node remember I was a genius . Ha !
Harvesting these fruits is a bit rum , because it ’s good to wait until the fruit leave out off the plant , which means that harvesting almost every day to keep the fruit from sit on the ground for too long is the best way to go . The fruits will carry on to mature after harvest , and most hoi polloi wait a few weeks or so before eating them .
