Physalis - Cultivation And Use

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Physalis in the garden is not superfluous

This nightshade vegetable is not yet as widespread in our gardens as, for example, tomatoes, but I believe that this situation will change in a positive way. Moreover, many mass media have already begun active advertising of its extremely useful properties.

I have known this vegetable for a long time, and with all the species grown in our country, and there are three of them: flower, berry and vegetable.

Flower physalis

We are familiar with orange lanterns for winter bouquets. In the villages, many housewives decorate winter-insulated windows with bright physalis balls. They look very nice against the background of falling snow. I grew this species, receiving bright lanterns of decorative physalis in autumn. It blooms with medium-sized blue flowers, which are somewhat reminiscent of the flowering of flax. To achieve a greater effect, it is worth growing a whole curtain of such plants. Then they will light up your garden with a bright orange color.

Berry physalis

Physalis of strawberry and pineapple varieties produces fruits the size of a hazelnut. The fruits of strawberry physalis are especially fragrant in jam.

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Vegetable tomato physalis

It was grown many years ago and then appreciated the simplicity of agricultural technology, as well as the good taste of the fruit. After a long break last season, I returned to this culture again.

The method of growing this physalis is very close to growing tomatoes in the open field. True, this vegetable has very small seeds, unlike tomato seeds, but physalis is also grown through seedlings, which have a more elegant look compared to tomato seeds.

Last season, I planted vegetable physalis in a garden filled with humus at the beginning of the third decade of May, along with tomato seedlings for open ground. I planted it under the arches, on which I put plastic wrap at night.

Ten days later I fed both physalis and tomatoes with organic fertilizer "Ideal", which stimulated their active development. After three weeks, the plants bloomed. Later, I once again fed the physalis and tomatoes with mineral fertilizers, combining top dressing with watering.

The protective film was used on the garden bed only at the beginning of the plant growing season. Later, it had to be abandoned, because physalis formed tall, mighty bushes, abundantly covered with yellow flowers and tied fruits in leathery sheaths. I think there are my omissions here: it was necessary to more carefully shape the bushes, using pinching and removing stepsons. And as a result of free, unlimited development, physalis set a huge number of fruits, which affected their smaller size and, possibly, led to a delay in their ripening.

It so happened that by mid-September, only half of the fruits ripened on the bushes, which then fell to the ground. When ripe, physalis looks like this: in a leathery shell, inside there is a flat-shaped tomato fruit with a dense skin. Inside the fruit is juicy pulp with a pleasant sweet and sour taste, which is a little knitting. In ripe physalis, both the cap and the fruit are light yellow in color, the fruit is tightly attached to the stem of the cap from the inside.

The harvested fruits are well stored in their shells and gradually ripen at home, and on the bushes they began to ripen gradually at the beginning of August. It should be noted that the abundance of rains in the past season led to partial cracking of the first ripe fruits. I tried to collect them right away to use in salads.

In the fall, when cleaning bushes from the garden, I noticed that the physalis had a more powerful root system than the neighboring tomatoes, although they were also quite tall. For these related crops, a high bed was prepared, this provided the plants with sufficient nutrition and moisture and the ability to place the roots at the depth they needed.

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Using the grown crop of physalis

Fresh, its fruits are very good in salads from fresh vegetables - tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. They give the salad a pleasant sourness. For winter harvesting, I use physalis in combination with tomatoes and separately in long-used recipes for an acetic-free marinade, in which I replace table vinegar with 9% citric acid or fruit vinegar.

But dried berry physalis is indistinguishable from raisins in taste. It is also used in cooking instead of raisins. True, it is less sweet, but this can be corrected by pouring over the fruit before drying with boiling syrup at the rate of 1 cup of sugar per 1 cup of water and boiling them for 5-10 minutes.

Berry Physalis can be harvested in late July or early August, depending on the weather. The fruits are not cut off, but the fallen ones are collected every few days. Thanks to the leathery sheath, they can lie on the ground without rotting. For greater convenience when collecting, at the beginning of the maturation of physalis, lay a piece of plastic film of a suitable size under the bushes.

After harvesting, the cap is removed from the fruit and dried in the sun or in a dryer at a temperature of about 40 ° C. In this case, from one kilogram of fresh fruits, approximately 200 grams of dry (raisins) are obtained.

I believe that physalis (any of its types) is an interesting crop that should be grown on the plots.