Grow Your Own Magazine

hi could you please advise me on tomatillos.do i have to stake them and pinch out side shoots.

Good idea as they can get a bit floppy and No are the simple answers.

Ok - it worked for me and I can't see anything to the contrary on the packet. Come to think of it at the moment I can't see the packet and without my glasses and/or lenses can only just see the screen.

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Earthbabe
If at first you don't succeed, open a bottle of wine.

My packet isn't very helpful and I keep meaning to google for advice as I haven't grown them before. My plants are looking very healthy though so hopefully I'll be able to cook some nice Mexican food with them later in the year.

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We grew tomatillos last year, with not much info on how to do it.... So, this is what we learned;
They get very tall - we didn't stake them which wasn't too much problem as the stems are stronger than tomatoes, but they got very very top heavy in their pots and kept falling over.

They get very tall - had to be moved out of the (small) greenhouse they were in.

They branch out willy nilly and flower at the ends of branches so you can't pinch out sideshoots, which makes it difficult to 'stop' them. So they get very tall.....

You need 2 plants to pollinate each other, and bees... We tried to pollinate them with a paintbrush in the greenhouse but it was slow, painful job and mostly didn't work. When they had to be moved outside the bees flocked to them and we finally got some fruit!!

I'm not bothering with them this year, as we're trying to clear an allotment, but Hugh F-W's recipe for tomatillo chutney went down a treat with the family at Christmas!
Good luck

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Sarah

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Hello
This is the info I have from the internet, as it says grow just like toms, thats all i was going to do, but now I am worried it might not be that straight forward afterall! Anyway here is the link
http://www.gardenersnet.com/vegetable/tomatill.htm
x

I think you can pune and over winter them too! get a head start next year! but me..... I dont like them