If you lost all of your tomatillo plants, can you try again? Can you direct seed them into your growing space? Did you start tgem in plug trays?
We started them in plug trays but the growing space that we are limited to in our apartment has very little sunlight. We tried to harden them off and transplant them out into the community garden that we’re a part of but they all died.
Definitely, we will try again in the fall, with all of the seeds that we collected since the first try.
We couldn’t direct sew them in the growing plots because we only visit the gardens once a week. And we didn’t get lucky with cloudy rainy weather to do so.
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Awe, thats frustrating when the plug seedlings dont make it. Im glad you have seed and can grow them again. If I had empty ground, or even a few weeds present, I would try planting a few seeds into the soil. Tomatillo have seeds that can sit on the soil in extreme conditions once they adapt to a garden, and even before they fully adapt. In one community garden we grow in, the tomatillos are yearly volunteers. We have observed purple, green and yellowish fruits grow on their space every time. My suggestion would be to scatter a few seeds onto the ground at your garden spot. There is still time to see them grow and produce fruit. Whats the soil like? Im in Arizona and my soil is mostly sand. I have used compost, old hay, paper shreds and chop and droped weeds to plant under. Maybe try 15 seeds if you can and see what happens.
Thank you for your advice and words of encouragement.
We are actually thinking about sacrificing a portion of our salsa verde tomatillo sauce out into the garden.
The sauce can be mixed in a jar with water and poured out and layered with the straw mulch so we can get some second generation tomatillos.
We can try out this method with these particular seeds because they were small fruited and see if it can be a successful way of planting future tomatillos, and other things too? As we only visit the garden once a week for watering, and I don’t want to waste any good parent seed.
The soil at the two garden is a sandy loam, and stays moist throughout the week with the light straw mulch.
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Yes, thats a good way to reseed. Get some photos as that’s a good technique to share. The seed can sit in dry ground for a few days and sprout when you get a good rain or if you water again. Its not a waste of seed even if conditions arent optimal. Seeds can withstand alot if environmental conditions.
It’s been a while but we figured out a way to collect as many seeds from our tomatillo fruits while still being able to utilize them for salsa verde.
Photo of all of the tomatillos that are going to be processed. All are small in size, and collected from early producing fruits.
Start making your salsa verde but start with blending your unhusked washed fresh tomatillos first. We are using the tomatillos raw in this method for seed collection.
Blend with a little bit of water, adding more as necessary to make it easier for the seeds to easily separate from the pulp.
(If you put too much water that’s okay, at the end you can strain the excess water out, throw it away and still not have watery salsa verde.)
From this point we poured out our tomatillo mix into a tall glass. It helps to let the mixture settle
and assist in the seeds sinking to the bottom of the glass by gently whisking the mixture with a fork. Pour out the separated pulp that the seeds have separated from back into the blender and you are left with the seeds in a glass.
When you are left with the seeds you are going to add clean water water and continuously strain and add more water to the glass, being careful not to spill out any seeds. This part is similar to the seed collection procedure when we ferment and process “wet” types of seeds.
(You add water, mix the seeds, and after the contents settle to the bottom, pour off the water and debris while leaving the seeds at the bottom of the glass. Do this over and over again until the water runs clear.)
You can process a lot of tomatillo fruits and collect a lot of seed this way, just have extra glasses on hand. You are going to feel like a chemist
pouring and straining the tomatillo mixture through and through.Now you can go back to your blender with all of the tomatillo pulp and juices, add your cilantro, jalapeno (however you like it), garlic, chicken bouillon, cumin powder, salt and pepper.
You can have the salsa verde in this raw form and use it for Mexican dishes or cook it down in a pan.
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With this cold front doing it’s thing I’m keeping an eye on the garden. Should I pull tomatillos if I think it’s gonna frost or will they be ok if the temp is flirting with 40F at night?
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They should be fine, I had frost on my roof a few days ago and my tomatillos still look great. Thankfully the frost didn’t settle into my garden.
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Perfect! I harvested my first 2 today. They fell off the plants and are just shy of filling up the lantern. There is a bunch more on the plants so I’m hopeful there will be a decent little harvest. Good enough for my first time growing them and having got everything going late.
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Oh. I would let them stay unless its going to be a hard frost. Worse case scenario the fruit gets a little damaged, seeds should be ok tho. But pull them in if they get damaged cause the fruit will break down faster once cold damaged.
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Really nice seed harvest!!!
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Thank you, it is our tomatillo seed contribution for Going to Seed this year. We are also happy to share the best way to save the most seed without wasting the fruit
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Thank you!!! Keep the photos and grow reports a coming in, we like to see how everyone is doing in their garden 
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Alas, I can’t get to the tomatillos fast enough. I suspect rabbit, maybe squirrels, are enjoying them before I get to 
And the ones in my garden proper got all spindly and had lots of flowers, but no fruit. In years past, I’ve had tomatillos grow great, but it was a at a different house in this area. :::sigh::: I’ll try again next year. Or maybe we’ll have another wonderfully long, plus wet, autumn and I’ll get another harvest chance.
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…hoping you get all the moisture/rain you need. I lost a whole section of my garden to bad compost. Everything died, all of it sprouted, nothing grew. So I’m getting a soil test completed to see if its just a pH problem or if there is residual herbicide….I just have to cry.
Oh no! I’ve read about others dealing with similar issues. Last fall, when a neighbor (grumpy old man) mowed his yard so that all the clippings ended up in the road, so I grabbed it and mulched garden beds with it. Alas, I sowed fall seeds, and NOTHING germinated. Then I realized he likely uses weed & feed on his yard… blah. Luckily, that has a short life, but I pulled all that off the beds as fast as I could. Now, I’m only using what I composted. And I got chickens, so that compost improved!
I was out working in the garden this evening, and the one tomatillo plant in that area is of good size, and all spread out. And lots of flowers, so we’ll see what I might get. I think I planted things too thick this last spring, so a fair number of things were stunted, except the really vigorous things, like cherry tomatoes. I never realized one can only eat so many cherry tomatoes…. until this year. I had so many volunteers, I was pulling lots of them, and I still had too many!
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Indeed. My worst nightmare…my lovely soil tainted. I too have heard of it happening and sure enough I got a hold of some contaminated compost. Urgle, I hope its a short time period for it to break down. I surely won’t listen to any salesman types ever again. I’m hoping it’s just a pH issue instead of the herbicide, but my luck may just have run out. I do have clean woodchips and will put those down in hopes the plants can live in it. Its heartbreaking.
Glad your tomatillos still living with blooms.
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I’ve gotten woodchips from various tree services, through chipdrop and when we’ve seen someone working in our neighborhood. Right now, I’ve got piles of hackberry and pecan chips. People don’t bother spraying hackberry, nor most other trees, except the fruit ones (pecan is native here, so it can be hard to know about those). But since trees outgrow the things around it, I think it tends to be pesticides, not so much herbicides, at least around here. And I’m learning to test things before putting it in my garden! I found a source of hay locally, and piled some around the giant rag weed that grows vigorously here to see if it killed it or not. It didn’t, so when that hay is soiled (chicken nesting boxes), its going into the compost bin. It amazes me the ways we have to be careful now. Maybe this isn’t new, and I’m just new to the scene.
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My plants may be suffering with the lack of rain. I’ve not been watering much, and maybe not enough for them to be happy, especially with the late start.
I cut up two fruits that were good sized but had fallen off the plants before filling the lantern. The inside was totally spongy. I just put the whole thing in to ferment. I’ll sort seeds from mush.
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I don’t think it’s a new thing, since they been Making compost its imperative to know what materials go into the mix. I thought it was a trusted source and as it turns out the compost was contaminated . My lesson learned. I just gotta figure out if I can fix it or if I just keep watering to help break down whatever it it. I still don’t have a positive identification of what I’m working with. I do like to support local business run by family and friends but this time it was non productive. Oh well, it happens, ill learn from my mistake and will just keep planting. My greenhouse is ok though thank goodness I didn’t place any compost in there.
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