Ground Cherry - What a great plant

I am growing Aunt Mollys ground cherries this year and I'm really happy with the abundant yield and the plant itself. I'm so impressed with the size, they must be 4-5ft across and 2ft high, all from one tiny seed... I think I'm going to plant these out on the boulevard next year and see how the neighbours take to it.

A bit of a pointless post, but there ya go.

We don't plant them any more. They spread themselves.

Squish a few fruits where you want some next year.

What do you do with them? I"ve eaten a couple unripe thus far, not all bad, I"m sure there's more good uses out there...

The bumblebee's have been thick on this plant the whole summer, very pleased.

You shouldn't eat ground cherries unripe. They're in the nightshade family and toxic to a certain degree when they are immature. I'm fixing to grow some of these soon. They have protein in them.

Yep

I agree a great plant. They do self seed easily, and for me the added benefit is that the chipmunks seem to prefer them to my tomatoes (which still get hit a little anyway).

Do they take one bite out of each ground cherry? Cute little varmints.

My close observation of chipmunks is that they eat the fruit and pack the seeds away into their cheek pouches for later use. Ground cherries are small enough that they eat the whole fruit, tomatoes are not; so I just leave them on the ground for later browsing which works most of the time. Squirrels one the other hand seem to prefer to destroy a good fruit each time. grrrrrrrrr!

I just picked up ten packs of ground cherry seeds. So excited. I've been throwing them around and have even been starting them normally in containers that I, gasp, water...

Edit: I added a pic before covering with leaf mold, peat moss and cheap unbagged top soil; leaving the fruits perched on buckets off the ground did in fact allow the fruits to beef up and some filled out into giant ground cherries

I have this plant a mention in the current (Nov 2024) cover crop discussion.

I picked up at a local market a few giant ground cherries this Spring, and there was enough meat on the outside to pop the meat in a salsa I was reheating and beefing up with fridge donations and plant the seed nuggets. The seeds are just as small in these 1-1/2" balls as the regular sized ones.
I was suspicious so before eating then I did a genetic modified/ CRISPR check -- seems there are CRISPR regular sized fruits in the making but the giant ones really are heirloom.

So this year I got giant ones! Well sort of. The paper husk was giant and slowly the fruits got bigger but not entirely so they may be under ripe -- but it's a fresh compost hill and only gets full sun for the first half of the day. I didn't have to water them at all which is good because I was recovering from ankle surgery and doing this project on crutches. Today they are going to get a bit of help with burying in the hill for next Spring.

In the past I learned that for me anyway, starting them in containers wasn't successful, even if fall planted in really big containers so I have always direct planted since, and find they are more frost resistant than volunteer tomatoes

Perhaps by next year I will have enough for salsa!

Since the unripe ones contain both tomatine and solanine, and one is reduced by baking and the other by boiling and disposing of the water, I intend to boil first then bake, and it's good I learned this because I never boiled my green cherry tomatoes before baking them