The tomatillo that took over the world

By Penny Stine
Thursday, September 2, 2010

Last year, I planted tomatillos from seed directly into my garden after the last frost. Some people, when considering sampling a new fruit or vegetable, actually go out and buy it at the grocery store.

I prefer to grow it in my garden. Of course, it’s a bummer when you’ve bought the seed, cheered on the plant and then pick it and eat it, only to discover that you’d rather eat worms.

So far, arugula is the only garden experiment that scores on a worm level in the Stine household’s collective taste buds. After one year of deliberately planting arugula and the next year of harvesting it after it self-seeded, I promised the arugula-hating menfolk in my household that I wouldn’t plant it again.

Then I bought a salad mix this spring that included arugula. You’d have thought I was trying to poison those nearest and dearest to me by their reaction to seeing it on their plates again. The good news is that they still love me, even if they would rather eat worms than put arugula on a sandwich.

Luckily, my experience with tomatillos hasn’t been nearly as traumatic. For those who are unfamiliar with tomatillos, they’re related to both tomatoes and a little-known yellow fruit called a ground cherry. Tomatillos originally come from Mexico and are the main ingredient in green salsa.

The fruit is green (although it sometimes turns yellowish when ripe) and covered by an almost paper-like husk that starts out green but eventually turns yellow and dry and splits when the tomatillo is ripe and ready to pick.

Last year, I planted the seeds close together and couldn’t bring myself to thin the plants after every last seed came up. The result was a row of spindly tomatillo plants that managed to produce what I thought was a fair amount of fruit.

I used tomatillos in everything from salads to scrambled eggs and soups. When eaten raw, they’re firmer than a tomato, with a tart, lemony flavor. They turn to mush pretty quickly when cooked, which makes them fine for soup and sauces. I also added them to a traditional tomato salsa, but I never had enough at one time to make green salsa last year. Bummer, because that was the main reason I planted tomatillos.

This year, I bought Cisneros and purple tomatillo seeds. The Cisneros are supposed to be gigantic and the purple ones are supposed to be purple. I started all the plants in the house and carefully nurtured them until they were big enough to go outside.

Unlike my tomato seedlings, I didn’t kill the tomatillos in my eagerness to let them enjoy life outside. A fellow gardener told me that tomatillos like to spread, so when they were big enough and the temperatures outside were warm enough, I planted them farther apart so they’d have room to grow.

Well, they grew. And grew and grew some more. I now have tomatillo plants that have petitioned to secede from my garden and start their own country. They’re crowding out the rosemary, the basil and the pepper plants. They’re threatening the tomato plants and reaching across the pathway to stalk the corn.

The plants have gotten so big that it’s impossible to weed around them, which doesn’t really break my heart. It does make it hard to find the fruit, since the grass is about a foot tall in the beds where the tomatillos grow. Luckily, the Cisneros are huge, which makes them easier to find. Most of the purple tomatillos are green, although I’ve picked a few with streaks of purple.

I also had tomatillos self-seed from the plants in last year’s garden, so now I have a third type of mystery tomatillo that’s being a complete sun hog amongst the potatoes, broccoli and kale.

All three types of tomatillos have proven to be late bloomers in my garden this year, and I’ve only just begun to pick them. But when I started picking last weekend, I ended up with enough to make five pints of tomatillo peach salsa.

From my experience last year, I know they’ll continue to thrive and produce until a hard freeze, which means I could make a lot of green salsa between now and Halloween.

The good news is that my family likes it and won’t mind it if we end up with green salsa on our scrambled eggs, green salsa on toast or green salsa on meat loaf. I don’t think I could get them to eat green salsa on arugula, but that’s OK. Not every garden experiment is worth repeating.

If you’d like to see the salsa recipe, go to gjsentinel.com and find Let’s Get Dirty, the gardening blog for adults who like to play in the dirt. Look for the tomatillo entry, where you’ll see photos, too.