Giant ground cherries existed!

[Toomanymatoes]

I wish I had taken some photo's of the actual berries to represent their size. They were at least 2x larger than all other groundcherries I have grown. Around 0.5" in diameter. They tasted very floral and tangy to me. Very potent/punchy flavor and quite different than other groundcherries I have had - which basically all taste somewhat like pineapple to me. Not these ones.

I made an upside-down cake using these giant groundcherries and it tasted really good. The cooked groundcherries reminded me of apricots.

[Lemonboy]

Tomatillo and ground cherry are the same genus, but different species. Tomatillo split their husks when ripe. Groundcherries' husks stay intact and the fruit will stay good for more than a month if the husk is left intact. Poha, Goldenberry, and other names are used for Physalis peruvians because it has spread widely and naturalized in many places. Also because ground cherry isn't the most marketable name.

It grows wild here in Kansas although usually in places where people had gardens 100 years or more ago when it was more popular in cultivation. With modern transport and faster shipping of perishable goods, weirder varieties became less popular. Why spend time growing an odd fruit with a mangoish taste when strawberries, bananas, pineapple and sometimes mango were available almost year round? Mr. Birdseye didn't help either.

It still seems to have the most commercial use in Latin and South America, but the relatively low germination rate of the seed and the fact that it's a labor intensive crop to harvest limits market growth. Plus, it's taste is novel, but not amazing. Most of the papers I found were chemist's looking for new alkaloids for pharmaceutical applications rather than people looking for better cultivation methods.

All that aside, the biggest ones I've seen were about 3/4" in diameter. If giant groundcherry existed they probably were too seedy, sour, or ripened too late for most gsrdeners. Bigger doesn't always mean better and if they weren't as good as something that was already marginal they probably didn't last long.

[GoDawgs]

I grew Aunt Molly's back in '16 and Pineapple in '17. They were one one my "toys" for those years. I wondered about making jam from them and finally found a recipe online. This is the result:



I wanted jam so I didn't use a jelly bag and all the seeds floated to the top of the jars after processing! It was somewhat floral in taste and not bad at all but this was my one and only time making it.

[Danny]

Pretty color even if the seeds did a float on you. Looks like confetti getting ready to fall down.

[Mark_Thompson]

@GoDawgs Looks amazing. Poha jam or syrup on top of vanilla ice cream is the taste of my childhood.

[Mark_Thompson]

Got a couple pictures from my frien who’s in Peru. They’re bigger than the strawberries!

70568101885__3C88BB64-9FC5-46F8-B4FF-372B5438790C.jpeg

IMG_0253.jpeg