I planted both of these for the first time this year.
They have been pulled up today and both are still green, being a dip stick I mixed them up, and brought them home to "ripen".
Looking them up it appears that tomatillos are eaten green in salsa type suaces or made in to chutney, but cape gooseberries are smaller and eaten raw and are very tasty when ripe and orange.
Is that about correct and is it worth trying to ripen the smaller ones? I've had them as a decoration when in a nice restaurant and they were lovely, next year! Do the tomatillos ever change colour?
Quote from: pumpkinlover on October 14, 2012, 13:44:36
I planted both of these for the first time this year.
They have been pulled up today and both are still green, being a dip stick I mixed them up, and brought them home to "ripen".
Looking them up it appears that tomatillos are eaten green in salsa type suaces or made in to chutney, but cape gooseberries are smaller and eaten raw and are very tasty when ripe and orange.
Is that about correct and is it worth trying to ripen the smaller ones? I've had them as a decoration when in a nice restaurant and they were lovely, next year! Do the tomatillos ever change colour?
There are green and purple tomatillos. The green ones turn cream whitish, cape gooseberries are orange, tomatillos never turn orange. In most cases ripe tomatillos fill their cases but ripe cape gooseberries have a much looser case. both keep for a couple of months stored in a basket in their paper cases. Tomatillos can be eaten at any stage of ripeness, cape gooseberries need to be ripe to be good. HTH
Thanks for the reply Galina. Will put in a basket in conservatory to see if any change. They were the purple tomatillos- both came from a kind person on a seed swop on here.