welcome to California gardening in today's episode
we will look at growing tomatillos as well as a delicious tomatillo
chutney recipe
so if you've watched my earlier video
video on tomatillos you must have seen that the tomatillos were not
of very great quality
so in this video I'm gonna show you how to overcome
all those flaws that were there in our previous growing experience
and how you can grow great tomatillos We're growing our tomatillos in
a whiskey barrel container
and the first thing that you'll notice is that
instead of growing one plant I'm actually growing two plants
side by side you can grow up to 3
tomatillo plants in this whisky barrel now the reason you should be
growing
two or three tomatillo plants around each other
is because tomatillos are self- sterile
which means that they can only be pollinated from
the flower of another plant and
by planting 2 tomatillo plants you ensure that there is
sufficient pollination between the two plants
and both the plants will set a lot of fruit
by following this method when the plants started growing
and started producing a lot of leaf the
a problem that I noticed was it had a lot of holes in the leaves due to slug damage
now what I did was I just went out at night and picked out all the slugs
and as you can see here the damage now is considerably reduced
you can see some holes in the leaves that were made by the slugs
but over a period of time there were no more slugs to chew on the leaves
now the fertilizer requirements for tomatillo plants
is very similar to what do you feed a tomato plant
so you need a nice soil base with lots of organic material
and you also need to give it a high nitrogen fertilizer
when the plant starts growing and once the plant is established
and is producing blooms as you can see here you can switch to a low nitrogen
fertilizer
which will cause the plant to produce more flowers
hence producing more fruit now here's a tomatillo flower
and as you can see each flower actually contains both the male and the female
part
however they still need to be fertilized from
the flowers of a different plant
this is a very strange behavior of tomatillos
and once you understand that you will be seeing a lot more fruit production
by planting multiple plants now what you see here is the outer covering or
the husk of the tomatillo
the fruits have already started forming inside
these covers now as the fruit grows larger
they're actually going to pop out of the covers well some do and and some do not
and when the fruits ripen you might even see them falling down from the plant
a perfect time to start harvesting
now tomatillos should be grown in full Sun
and full Sun means getting
six-plus hours of sunlight on the plants
and by just following these simple techniques
you should be able to grow great looking tomatillo plants
now for those who do not know what's a tomatillo
A tomatillo is a sour kind of a tomato
it actually looks like a tomato but it's pretty sour and not as sweet at all
and is usually used for making things like salsas or chutneys
so we planted our tomatillo plant
back in march which was the beginning of the spring season
and as you can see the plant has grown pretty big
it also needed some staking and
by may it has started producing a lot of fruit
as you can see here on the plant and it's only by the month of June that you
can see that the tomatillo
have really become large and sort of look ready for harvest
so let's go ahead and harvest a few tomatillos
and see what kind of tomatillos we're getting
whether they're of good size or whether we should wait
for further harvest so let's go ahead and harvest this one
this looks like a pretty good sized tomatillo
and once you remove the outer shell or the outer husk
and the surface of the tomatillos might be a little sticky
however they come off the sticky governing comes off once you wash them thoroughly
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so as you can see we have been harvesting a lot of tomatillos from this plant
and this is pretty much the size that you should aim for
some plants do produce very small tomatillos
but most of the nice seeds for tomatillos
should produce tomatillos should of about this size
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So that's our harvest as you can see these are great looking tomatillos
never had any problems with any insects
except for those slugs chewing the leaves in the beginning
but great-looking fruits with absolutely no damage
now the tomatillo plant will continue to produce fruits
right throughout the summer and you can keep harvesting
while the plant is producing them
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for the chutney recipe you will need a tomatillos
2 tablespoons of oil to
2 teaspoons of mustard seeds
2 teaspoons of fenugreek seeds
a few curry leaves
chili powder according to how much spicy you want to
some hing or asafoetida
and some salt according to your taste
the first step is to chop the tomatillos and dice them
into small pieces you don't have to be very specific
because you will be blending these tomatillos anyway
so these are our diced tomatillos
and now you need to puree them I usually use the pulse mode
it just prevents the tomatillos
from getting over-blended
you now need to add the two tablespoons of oil
in a pan and then add the mustard seeds
and the mustard seeds need some time to start
sputtering so what to see here is
the sputtering mustard seeds now add the fenugreek seeds
then add the curry leaves and
then the Hing or asafoetida
ad the chilly powder according to how spicy you want it
and then mix all these ingredients together
and now add the tomatillos that you just pureed in the blender
And then mix these
tomatillos very well
with all the other ingredients
And while you're mixing the tomatillos with
all the other spices you can actually smell the aroma
of this chutney it's very flavorful and very nice
and now you need to cover the pan and let it cook for
five minutes and that's it your tomatillo chutney is
so I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to know from you my YouTube viewers
do you grow tomatillos have you tried growing them
and if you do grow them or or buy them how do you use it
do you make salsas do you make chutneys do let me know
and I'll see you again soon happy gardening