Ground Cherries

Every winter we look forward to the seed catalogs that start arriving in late December and early January.  We spend hours flipping through these catalogs, dreaming of spring and what we want to plant.  Every year I like to find something new to try.  This year this new thing was ground cherries.  I found them in the Seed Savers catalog.  Here is a link to their web site that has the description of "Aunt Molly's" ground cherries that first caught my interest.  


http://www.seedsavers.org/Details.aspx?itemNo=912(OG)

Doesn't that sound interesting!  So, I ordered a package and planted them.  They didn't grow very well until the weather got pretty warm.  Then they really took off.  Here is a picture of what the plants look like.

Something has been eating holes in the leaves, but I never see any bugs on them and, whatever it is, it does not seem to hurt the plants.  So, I am not worrying about it.


As you can see the plants are big and bushy and have a sprawling habit.  If you look under the leaves, down inside the plants, you can see the flowers.  They are not very large, but are quite pretty.  Here is one of them.

The flowers form "husks".  The fruit of the plant, the ground cherries, grow inside these husks.  Here is a picture of one of these.

I've been wondering how to tell when they are ripe.  So, I did some reading tonight and found this good discussion of ground cherries on the Organic Gardening website.


http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/ground-cherries

I had to chuckle when I read this sentence from the above website:  "The distinctive, sweet-tart taste of ground cherries lends itself to wildly diverse recipes."  I'm not the sort of cook that tries "wildly diverse" recipes too often.  But, maybe when I get enough ripe ground cherries, I'll step out of my circle of comfort and try something a little more daring!