top of page

A year of trialling tomatilloes

fntropicals

What a year of success upon success with this wonderful fruit that has become my new favorite quick plant.



We wanted to trial 2 varieties of tomatilloes and see how they produced in Doubtless bay NZ. The climate is usually fairly dry with summer temperatures in the mid to upper 20s centigrade.

However .... this has been a year of floods, horrific wind and high humidity.

Our tomatoes got hammered, and developed blight and the wind was so damaging our usual crop of about 40kg was reduced by half.


Right next to and partially in the tomatoes grew our tomatillos. We wanted to see of similar diseases crossed species and how hardy they are.


Trial one : Yellow Queen of Malinalco tomatillos grown over clay, with a 20cm thick layer of grass clippings and old potting mix.

Trial 2 : Yellow Queen of Malinalco tomatillos grown in a traditional loamy garden bed , adjacent to cucumbers.

Trial 3: Purple Tomatillo in a raised garden bed.


We think the picture of the end of season fruit (the very last pick show the variety of size with Trial 2 still producing huge fruit. The variation in size was greatest with the poor soil Trial 1.


Odd outcomes...

Some plants in 10cm pots we hadn't sold produced some fine fruit.

Would we recommend growing Q of M tomatillos???

Hell yeah!

If my 12 year old gets off minecraft and stands at the kitchen bench and eats about 1/2 a kg raw... they are worth growing in my opinion.

The last of the summer harvest for us... next year we will grow more, starting in early spring!



Why no pics of the purple... sorry... we ate them to quickly. Next year we will try to be more restrained.




233 views0 comments

Comments


Subscribe Form

Thanks for submitting!

0210608856

©2021 by Far North Tropicals , Aaron McCloy

bottom of page