It's 2017, and announcing a resounding success with my first two tomatillo plants. In central Minnesota, the summer saw temps mainly in the mid to upper 70's, followed by low to mid 80's, and August produced only a couple days above average. I understand that tomatillos like things a little hotter. In spite of that, I had some fruit produced, and am hoping to see a harvest before the first frost. I am a beginning gardener, and already dreaming of next year's harvest that might allow dehydrating and grinding into powder for winter batches of green salsa.

I am up along the Canadian/MN border country and have had good luck with tomatillos. They tend not to grow very large here but are very prolific. If you let any fall to the ground without cleaning them up in the fall you will have all sorts of volunteer seedlings. Welcome to the forum!

I planted two plants labled as ground cherries.
I had more than I would use so I threw them over to the squirrels; they threw them back at me.
Not sure what they are good for ; I put them in chilli but see no real taste difference.

RpR said:I planted two plants labled as ground cherries.
I had more than I would use so I threw them over to the squirrels; they threw them back at me.
Not sure what they are good for ; I put them in chilli but see no real taste difference.

Well, Fire Roasted Tomatillo Salsa is fabulous! I am trying to stretch out my supply of the remaining 1/2 dozen pints I have left. New grandchild in the family so no time to mess with canning this year.

freezengirl said:

Well, Fire Roasted Tomatillo Salsa is fabulous! I am trying to stretch out my supply of the remaining 1/2 dozen pints I have left. New grandchild in the family so no time to mess with canning this year.

Problem, I do not like roasted chiles so I doubt tomatillos would be much better.
Most people do but to me it is mediocre to not tasty.
I may plant a couple in the South garden next year just to see how they do down there.

RpR said:I planted two plants labled as ground cherries.
I had more than I would use so I threw them over to the squirrels; they threw them back at me.
Not sure what they are good for ; I put them in chilli but see no real taste difference.

Since I wrote that I used a lot of tomatillos for the fairly large quantity of chilli I made.
Now I read on one site they are used for thickening in green salsa; as I said earlier I did not taste any real difference but they did not hurt the chilli at all.
Can anyone here give a comparison , to some thing else, of what a tomatillo really tastes like.
I was amazed at how tough they were as I gave it almost no care and it looked like it but when I cleaned it up in the fall there were a lot of them.

First time in four years I did not have any volunteers, but I may have weeded them out this spring when I had to many unknown volunteers before I planted corn.

Surprise, surprise , I got a volunteer tomatillo this year, that is very healthy.
Their seeds must be able to sit in the ground for a bit of time.

I only tried growing tomatillos one time, quite a few years back; I just had one plant and it was huge but never set any fruit, but since then I think I've read that you need more than one plant for them to pollinate. Is that true?

Weedwhacker said: I only tried growing tomatillos one time, quite a few years back; I just had one plant and it was huge but never set any fruit, but since then I think I've read that you need more than one plant for them to pollinate. Is that true?

This one looks like one plant, but I will have to look closer.