Custom Search

Friday, September 28, 2012

Lonely Tomatillo

Here's an attractive plant from our backyard garden this year. It's especially popular in Mexico and Mexican cooking and is called a Tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica). Ours grew into a large healthy plant and bloomed profusely but inside those lovely lantern-like pods there are very few fruit. Now I discover from Wikipedia that the tomatillo is very "self-incompatible", meaning that it doesn't like to pollinate itself so there should be at least two plants for it to set fruit properly.

2 comments:

JoJo said...

What does one use tomatillos for in cooking? Have you used yours?

Benjamin Madison said...

Hi JoJo, no we haven't used any in cooking yet - I doubt we'll get more than two or three and they are quite small. I think Mexicans use them in sauces and salsa.