Beginner Gardening: Tomatillos are Weeds, 0 by Ozark

Ozark wrote:
I don't know if anybody else here raises Tomatillos (Mexican Husk Tomatoes). I do, as they add a great flavor when used as an ingredient in my garden salsa.

This year I mail ordered my seeds early, and I planted the whole pack of Tomatillo seeds in about an 8-foot section of a row. Then we had a couple of weeks of rainy weather, and the crabgrass got ahead of me. The Tomatillo plants came up, but they were about 2" tall surrounded by 4" tall thick crabgrass in the row. There was no way to pull the crabgrass without pulling the Tomatillos, so I just cleared it all out and expanded my row of okra instead. Figured I'd have to do without Tomatillos this year.

Still fighting the crabgrass wars in early June, I was tilling between rows and pulling weeds out of rows when I noticed that a whole bunch of those weeds looked familiar. Then I noticed that there were hundreds of them grouped in just two places - where I grew yellow Tomatillos last year, and where I grew purple Tomatillos the year before. Finally, I realized that those "weeds" were Tomatillo seedlings.

I transplanted some of both the yellow and purple varieties to the ends of my corn rows, gave them some support, and they took off. Wow - apparently I've been buying and planting Tomatillo seeds every year and tilling under hundreds of Tomatillo plants that were already up. Well, as long as I'm using this same garden I've bought my last Tomatillo seed. They're on their own now, because I know they'll re-seed themselves every year.

I've read that before Tomatillos were grown for markets in Mexico, they weren't cultivated at all. They were just a weed that comes up in corn fields, and people knew that the fruits were good in all kinds of sauces. If you haven't grown Tomatillos, they're real easy to grow and we enjoy them a lot.