This spring I was looking around Bachman’s for a new food to grow. I came across ground cherries. I bought a pack of four and planted them in my front yard. The plants themselves were cool looking as they got bigger. They looked very similar to a tomato plant, just shorter. About two months after planting, the cherries began to grow in their husks hanging from the plant. As soon as the husks drop to the ground you can gather the cherries and (if ripe) eat right away. For the most part I would leave them in a container on the counter for a few days until they became ripe. After that we would wash and eat as is.
The cherry has a mixture of flavors – a little bit of tomato and cherry combined. They were very good! Little did I know, each plant keeps producing cherries until the frost comes. Over the summer I’d say there were several hundred little cherries that dropped. Next year I plan to do a better job of gathering all of the cherries and freezing those that we don’t want to eat right away. I also found some tasty recipes online that I would like to try next year. Adding a small tomato cage around each plant would be a nice touch as well. This turned out to be a fun (easy) plant to experiment with this year.
I just learned about these this summer at the Farmer’s Market. I heard they spread out during growing, did you find that? Taste good/unique.
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They definitely got wider as they grew and took up more space but they didn’t multiply in the number of plants. What surprised me was that they just kept growing cherries. So many plants are done after they bloom once – these just kept coming! It was a unique taste, but very fresh tasting.
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That’s fun, I might need to try next year. I like that they keep producing.
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