Tomatillos, has anyone grown these?

[Gary350]

Do tomatillos grow like tomatoes? Do plants look like tomato plants? Is this a 65 or 70 day crop? Do they grow in cages like tomatoes? Now I wish I had grown these this year for green enchilada sauce I like it better than red sauce. Tomatillos were 10 for $1 at Food City when I lived in AZ. Maybe its not too late to plant seeds? It probably take 5 days to get seeds. Hum...

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/sear ... ction=view

[pepperhead212]

Definitely too late to plant them, as they are closer to 70 day after transplant, so about 100 day from planting. I plant them on a trellis, though they didn't do well this year - I think because the purple variety was even longer, and they seem to need another plant to be pollinated - they can self-pollinate, but not well.next season I'll get some new green variety, and plant two of the same.

Their flosers attract a lot of pollinators!

[dveg]

In fact, tomatillos ARE self-incompatible, which means that plants cannot pollinate themselves reliably. Unlike with tomatoes, one flower can't pollinate itself and I think you need at least two distinct plants to do the job. One tomatillo plant likely won't get you anything. One also needs a pollinator to move pollen from one plant to the other. This is not widely known, and there is, in fact, some misunderstanding on the web about it. If you want to save seeds from a tomatillo variety you like, it better be a mile or so away from any other variety.

Here's a nice writeup from SeedSavers. https://blog.seedsavers.org/blog/tomatillopollination

[Gary350]

In fact, tomatillos ARE self-incompatible, which means that plants cannot pollinate themselves reliably. Unlike with tomatoes, one flower can't pollinate itself and I think you need at least two distinct plants to do the job. One tomatillo plant likely won't get you anything. One also needs a pollinator to move pollen from one plant to the other. This is not widely known, and there is, in fact, some misunderstanding on the web about it. If you want to save seeds from a tomatillo variety you like, it better be a mile or so away from any other variety.

Here's a nice writeup from SeedSavers. https://blog.seedsavers.org/blog/tomatillopollination

This information is confusing. I knew tomatillos are not self pollinating. 2 plants side by side will pollinate and make fruit. But if you want to save seeds plants need to be 1 mile apart. It seems to me if plants are 1 mile apart there is, no pollination, no fruit, no seeds. I probably don't want to save seeds 4 pack of plants are $1.79 at the garden store. 4 plants side by side in a square should do good next year. I might like to plant these because they attract a lot of pollinators.

[dveg]

I think the point is, as I said, that if you want seeds of ONE VARIETY, the plants have to be a long ways away from plants of the OTHER VARIETY. With tomatoes, that isn't the case, because they pollinate themselves, and having another variety nearby isn't a risk.

[TomatoNut95]

I agree with @dveg. If you were intending on saving true-to-type seeds from your tomatillos, and you were growing more than one tomatillo variety, you'd want to keep the different varieties separate from each other to prevent cross-pollination by insects and get hybrid seed. However, if you're just doing one kind and don't intend to save seeds, you're fine.


Also, I don't see why you can't cage tomatillos, that's what I did to mine.

[Taiji]

I tried some tomatillos a couple of years ago in AZ. I got a few. They make a really attractive plant. I just used seeds from some tomatillos that I got at the produce section to make green salsa.

Unfortunately they seem to be especially prone to attack and eventually looked like this:

This was the culprit. Applestar identified this for me. I mistakenly thought it was a striped cuke beetle. Can't remember what she said it was.

Never saw this pest before or since. How did they find my tomatillos?
I guess if you grow it, they will come. Hah!

[pepperhead212]

I never knew what it was, but that could have been it - before I started spraying Surround on them, my tomatillos would always have holes in the leaves, yet it never seemed to hold them up! As soon as I started using Surround (only because I was using it mainly for flea beetles on EP), it stopped! I figured it was some bug like that, which doesn't like Surround.

[TomatoNut95]

@Appletstar is correct, it is a species of Cucumber Beetle. I Googled it and found photos. I have seen the spotted species in the past, but I don't believe I have the striped.

[pepperhead212]

I have a striped beetle, that looks like that, but it is much smaller, and I usually see it in my flowers, so I figured it's pollinating! Another striped beetle I see is larger than the one in the photo, in that it is much wider, with more stripes. maybe a potato beetle? Those are the ones I destroy. Any on striped/spotted ones on the leaves I get rid of (except ladybugs, of course).

[applestar]

Not cucumber beetle —

Subject: Spotted and striped cucumber beetles

That's a kind of a potato beetle -- NOT the more familiar Colorado Potato beetle. Let me see... ah ha! -- THREE-LINED potato beetle https://extension.unh.edu/resources/fil ... ep1517.pdf

[TomatoNut95]

@Pepperhead, does the bug you're describing (the larger, wider striped one); does he have an orange head, white/off white wings with black stripes down them? Sounds like a Potato Beetle. I have seen those in the past. The bug on @Taiji's plant is a striped Cucumber Beetle.

[pepperhead212]

I figured that it was some sort of potato beetle, since I don't see it often, but that one year that I grew potatoes, it was everywhere! That, and a spotted type, were the ones that destroyed many other plants that season - the reason why I never grew potatoes again. It didn't bother the potatoes, but they were such dense bushes that they were breeding grounds for insects that spread out to other plants, like eggplants, and destroying them.