I grew tomatillos for the first time this year, and of course I couldn't start out with the regular old green ones. Now I've got several huge purple tomatillo plants loaded with fruit in various stages of ripeness, and not much time left before they freeze to death.
Many of them have split their husk, but only the exposed areas of the fruit turned purple... the parts shaded by the husk are still green.
Has anyone else grown a purple variety of tomatillo, and does anyone know if purple tomatillos can be used when green?
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- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 6113
- Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:43 pm
yes you can eat the "green" purple tomatillos. as long as they have broken the husk they are done. to get them to turn more purple, harvest them, hull them and leave them in a sun lit area out of direct sunlight. in a day or two they will turn almost black making for some cool looking( and amazingly tasty) salsa.
Thanks, everyone!
When the first ones split and started to turn purple, I actually inverted the husks by hand to expose the green parts, but now there are far too many to do individually.
Eric: The seed company I got them from just said to harvest them when they had turned deep purple, with no mention of ripening them up later. Thanks for the tip!
soil: I was hoping they might be pick-able once they broke the husk (like the green varieties). I got some of them to colour completely on the plant (using the aforementioned method), but they ended up being wormy.
Should I be searching the Recipe section for this cool looking and amazingly tasty salsa you speak of, or is it a closely guarded secret?
garden5: Their culture may be similar, but appearance-wise they make me think of a cross between eggplant and black nightshade. In fact, I had some black nightshade pop up in my garden this year and it had me wondering how I ended up with more tomatillo seedlings than I started!
When the first ones split and started to turn purple, I actually inverted the husks by hand to expose the green parts, but now there are far too many to do individually.
Eric: The seed company I got them from just said to harvest them when they had turned deep purple, with no mention of ripening them up later. Thanks for the tip!
soil: I was hoping they might be pick-able once they broke the husk (like the green varieties). I got some of them to colour completely on the plant (using the aforementioned method), but they ended up being wormy.
Should I be searching the Recipe section for this cool looking and amazingly tasty salsa you speak of, or is it a closely guarded secret?
garden5: Their culture may be similar, but appearance-wise they make me think of a cross between eggplant and black nightshade. In fact, I had some black nightshade pop up in my garden this year and it had me wondering how I ended up with more tomatillo seedlings than I started!