Going back to one of the many reasons for why I grow what I grow, I try to pick things I can’t easily get elsewhere. Ground cherries are a great example.
Ground cherries are in the tomatillo family — you can see from the picture above the husk covering the actually berry — and they are extremely easy to grow. I bought a plant last year and had an outstanding batch of ground cherries. They are more like a blueberry than a cherry or tomato. They have no pit, they are yellowish orange, and very soft and sweet. They have a vanilla cherry flavor.
Ground cherries are a bush plant growing pretty close to the ground. The cherries drop to the ground when they are ready to eat. Here in lies the problem. When they drop to the ground, someone (a rabbit?) steals them before I can get to them. Last year I came up with the plan to shake the bush a little bit to get the ripe cherries to fall and then pick them up. That way I wasn’t pulling fruit that wasn’t ready to eat and I got to them before the rabbits did.
They keep on producing all summer long until the first frost. Keep picking them and they’ll keep growing.
I let the plant die in it’s spot last fall and to my amazement, a few ground cherry plants regrew this summer. One plant grew about 25 feet away from the original plant — I’m not sure if it was wind blowing the cherry or I dropped a berry that far away.
In any case, I’m looking forward to a robust ground cherry harvest. I should save them all up and make a ground cherry jam, but I have more fun eating them right out in the garden.
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