My advice on growing ground cherries? Don’t bother.
X-ray specs and sea monkeys.
This year I’m trying a few new plants in the garden. For whatever reason, ground cherries caught my eye. They seemed easy to grow, and the idea of growing something sweet in the garden was appealing.
If you look at the seed catalogues, you’ll see piles of beautiful ripe fruit. You’ll see the fruit described as “about the size of a cherry tomato”. You’ll hear the flavor likened to, e.g., pineapple.
And X-ray specs let you see the bones in your hands. And sea monkeys provide endless amusement.
I bought some some seeds for Cossack Pineapple ground cherries, sprouted them, and transplanted the seedlings to the garden without incident. They grew just fine, and appear to be thriving in the garden with no help from me. So ease-of-cultivation is as-advertised.
Here’s the garden plot, below, with a bunch of healthy ground cherry plants. I have maybe half-a-dozen plants, in about 16 square feet of garden space.
The fruit are unusual. They have a papery husk like a tomatillo. So it’s moderately interesting plant, though nothing showy. It doesn’t really stand out in the garden.
Here’s the first problem: The fruit is about the size of a pea. Not a pea pod. A pea. OK, maybe a fairly large pea. But definitely in that ballpark. Vastly smaller than, say, a typical cherry tomato. Imagine having to pick your peas by picking one pea at a time.
Oh, did I mention the ground part? The fruit ripens over an extended period of time, visible as the papery husks change from pale green to pale tan. You will see it said that the best way to tell if the fruit is ripe is to let it fall to the ground. My take on it is the only reliable way to get ripe ground cherries is to pick them up off the ground. As a result, in practice, you harvest these by getting down on hands and knees and rooting around in the mulch, underneath your plants, to find these pea-sized fruits in their cute little papery husks.
Here’s the second problem: The total yield of fruit is tiny. Maybe this will get better as the season progresses. But right now — from a half-dozen of these, covering may 16 square feet — I might be able to pick enough of fruit to match the volume of one (1, a) salad tomato. And, because I’m impatient, I pick not only what’s on the ground, but I pick some that appear ripe, but are still on the bush.
Here’s what today’s harvest looks like, in the husk, and then peeled:
Note the color variation for both the husks and the fruit. That’s because I picked a handful up off the ground — those are the ripe yellow ones above — then snagged a few more that were still hanging, but appeared ripe.
Here’s the third problem: They aren’t sweet. At least, these aren’t. Not even the fully-ripe ones. They do have an unusual taste. It’s described as being like pineapple, but in fact its only distantly related to that. Slightly tangy, slightly fruity. It’s definitely pleasant. Even the green ones have a nice tartness to them. But it’s not some great delicacy. It’s nowhere close to being as nice as, say, fresh blackberries.
It’s possible the yield will pick up some, as the season progresses. It’s possible that other varieties are tastier. But as of today, my view is that these are an interesting novelty, and nothing more than that. If you’re willing to get down on hands-and-knees, you can harvest a scant palmful of ripe fruit per day, out of roughly 16 square feet of garden space. And enjoy an interesting — but not sweet — fruit-like flavor from them.
In the grand scheme of what I could be growing in that space, and using my gardening time for, these are a waste of time and space. Interesting. Better than nothing. But I won’t be growing them again.
