Pots of Fruit

Pinching off the Physalis

It's time to start pinching off the physalis in our garden.  We are just starting to harden them off after their winter in the green house and one of them is already beginning to get a bit too spindly.  They seem to be very vigorous plants and grow like the clappers, wanting to grow extremely tall very quickly.  The fruits start to appear at the tips of the shoots so if you want more fruit you must encourage the plant to make more shoots rather than tall shoots.  The plant on the left is still fairly small and stubby so I'll leave that one alone but another one we have is at just about the right phase to start pinching....as far as I know. This bush is actually starting to produce flowers so I felt very guilty picking one off but I know that in the long run there will be many many more.  Pinching off basically means that you cut off the growing tip of a shoot. This encourages more side shoots to develop. Once the new side shoots grow long enough you can repeat the same procedure with them and so one main shoot with one tip turns into  possibly  20 side shoots with obviously 20 tips.  So the amount of fruit that can be had is greatly increased presuming all other factors go well. 

To cut off the tip you can simply pinch it off with your nails as the physalis is very soft and you can make a clean cut very easily. 

Just to see exactly how effective this is I have left one of the stalks "unpinched" in order to see how it develops in comparison to the others and I'll let you know how it gets on in a month or two.

In the mean time I'd love to get some feedback on whether or not the photos that I use in these posts are clear enough.  Can you understand clearly what I am trying to get at or would more photos be useful?  Are they big enough etc?  This will help me to improve the clarity of posts.  So please leave a comment or email me at the link provided on the left. 

Physalis Seedlings

In behind this mesh lies maybe a hundred physalis seeds, maybe more.  When the little fruit pods of the physalis dry out they leave a skeletal lantern behind and all the seeds stay safely tucked away inside.  It's just as well because we left them lying around in the green house over the winter, not paying them much attention until one day Chris decided to open up a lantern and plant some seeds. He simply scattered them in a little tray of potting compost and covered them with some more potting compost.  A few weeks later one little seedling started to  stretch up out of the soil. In the next couple of days lots more followed suit and suddenly there were about 40 seedlings in the tray.  Now there seems to be about 100!  I'm hoping to pot all of these on and see if I can swap them for other plants with some people.  If you live in Ireland and want some physalis plants them drop me an email and you can come and collect some.  I live in Limerick City and would love to swap any kind of fruiting plant for some of these.  I've a feeling they won't fruit in their first year but they will definitely do well in their second year if put into a large pot and kept indoors during the winter.  We're still learning about them and it would be great if other people experimented with them in different types of pots, in polytunnels, on balconies or whatever your growing conditions are.   If anyone from overseas would like to swap some seeds then  please get in touch.   I'm dying to experiment with all sorts of fruit but it can be hard to know where to get either the seeds or the  mature plants.    I'm sure there are some  interesting fruits out there that I've never even heard of and that might grow well in our temperate climate.   In fact now that I've thought of it a seed exchange would be a great idea...mmmm.  I'll have to give that some thought.   

Back to the physalis seedlings.  Some of the m got attack by slugs and were completely killed so I scattered some seaweed meal around the little plants.  This salty granular seaweed  deters slugs  as long as it stays dry.  They won't venture on to it a s the salt would harm them  and so they turn back.  And the trace minerals in the seaweed  are good for most plants as far as I can tell. I'll be keepin g them under close scrutiny  for the next few weeks  to make sure a good number of them make it to the next stage....being planted into little pots.

Physalis/Cape Goosberry Success

Our sole remaining hope for our physalis or cape gooseberry began ripening its fruit about 3 weeks ago.

The other runner for best physalis got severely rampant and as a result did not produce many fruits. It also got attacked by woodlice as it was inside in our porch. The little woodlice just ate of each flower as it developed and unfortunately it took us a while to realise what was happening. Fruit plants that are in greenhouses or porches seem to be most affected by these fellas. Also, the fact that they are in pots seems to confound the issue as well. But I’ve had a suggestion as to how to prevent this in the future. Rubbing Vaseline on the stem should prevent the little guys venturing beyond and into the flowering region. I will certainly try this next year although I have not been able to completely decide whether this would be organic or not….It’ll be good enough I think. We did very little with the successful plant except leave it in a sunny place and allow the copious amounts of rain that we have had this year to water it. 

The fruits are nearly ripe when the little lantern packaging looks sort of dried up and crispy. It changes from green to beige.

I have read that you should wait for the fruit to drop off in order to ensure that they are at perfect ripeness but there is no way that we have the patience for this.

Here is Chris marvelling at the wondrous fruit that I thought would never produce fruit. As it turns out it is pretty easy to grow these and you should expect a reasonable fruit as long as you keep it stressed to a degree. Chris brought out a cape gooseberry plant to the farm where he volunteers and Jim promptly put it in the ground in a polytunnel. Again, this was just too easy for the plant and so it just got massive without doing much fruit. Chris is now experimenting with taking cuttings from this plant and I’ll let you know how he gets on.

Here is the finished product once the handy wrapping is peeled back….all lovely and yellow and soft.

Yum!

Unfortunately some of the fruits have split while still on the plant. I’m not too sure why this is but it may have something to do with getting too much rain in a sudden burst. We still ate most of these ones and they were still nice although a few had started to go mouldy. So in some ways it might pay to take them off a little early so you can be monitoring the situation. Overall I would HIGHLY recommend these fruits as being easy to grow, very suitable for planting in containers and for small areas. They don’t seem to require much heat but do need to be taken indoors during the winter to ensure they survive another season. Have a go!

Cape Gooseberries - From Seed to Setting Fruit

We're still learning about these plants but we seem to have a healthy crop of fruits on one of the plants. This is what we know so far about growing them.  We've found it hard to get information on them as they are not grown too commonly in Ireland or Britain.  They seem to do very well in containers but need a lot of water when they are setting fruit.

PROPAGATION

From Seed.

We are still learning about this but there seems to be two options for creating new plants.  Take the seeds from a fruit and plant them.  These fruits can be bought in some supermarkets in Ireland.  Otherwise, the next time you're in a hotel getting your desert nab the cape gooseberry that nearly always accompanies the deserts.  I have seen the seeds in a garden shop once but I don't think they will be too easily come by...please let me know if I'm wrong here.

The seeds supposedly need a high humidity to germinate but we pretty forgot about them when we sowed them, letting them dry out several times by accident.  Plenty of them grew so just give it a try and see what happens.  They should fruit in the first year if put into a large container. If they don't then they certainly will the following year.

Cuttings

You can take a cutting from the plant and these apparently root easily.  More on this when we actually try it in the autumn.

SOIL

Cape gooseberries prefer poor soils.  Sandy to gravelly loam is the best.  Do not add fertilisers as you will end up with lots of foliage at the expense of fruit. 

FROM WINTER TO END OF SUMMER

This is where we have most experience so I will take you through what we did over this period of the year.

During the winter we moved the cape gooseberry into the green house as they are frost tender.  The fact that they are in pots makes this a lot easier.  We pruned them at this time as well.

They seem to loose their leaves over the winter but in early March they started to come to life again.

By the end of April they were well and truly on the go and were moved outside as the temperatures rose.

At this stage it may be a good idea to pinch off some of the growing tips in order to encourage a bushy plant.  More branches means more fruits so you don't want to let a couple of branches grow really tall even though it may look impressive. 

By the start of June they were beginning to flower at the tips of each branch.  At this stage three new shoots start to develop at the tip of the older shoot(you can see them to the left and right of the flower and behind it.  Each one of these will start a new fruit and then three more shoots will start from each one and so the number of fruiting tips increases and increases.

You can see this clearly on the right side of this picture.  So as you move up the stem there are fruits at different stages of development.  At the top of this photo you can see the flower buds before they open.  Yellow flowers then emerge.  This falls off and the calyx closes again.  This is the lantern like thing that is encasing the fruit as it now forms (bottom of picture).  The calyx then grows to about 3 cm in diameter.

It's kind of frustrating not to be able to see the fruit as it develops but we've had a few tentative peeks through the calyx and we can see fruit that are just less that 1 cm in diameter. 

Overall there seems to be very little maintenance with cape gooseberries.  There was a huge amount of rain during the last 7 weeks and so we did not have to think about watering them but make sure they do get enough water when setting fruit. 

They do however need to be sheltered from strong winds or if this is not possible staking is definitely recommended as the shoots are quite soft and easily snapped. 

Here are our two biggest cape gooseberries and you can see that we didn't know about the pricking off of the shoots at the start of the season and ended up with one lanky plant.  This one was also kept indoors for much longer and this may have just made it go bananas.  So it seems that the cape gooseberry does not really want high temperatures in order to set good fruit.  There was only a fraction of the amount of fruit on the lanky one.  Also, as the lanky one had been kept in doors it suffered from constant attacks of woodlice.  These little fellas seem to enjoy nipping off all new flowers and nothing else.  I think they suck sap from the plant at these sites but I'm not 100% sure.  So very few of the meagre collection of fruits survived and we decided to cut back the plant and just see what it does.

Here is a close up of the fruits on the good plant at the moment.  It is still flowering and so we are expecting a really good crop.  We are holding our breaths as we can barely believe that we will have these amazing fruits in abundance fairly soon. 

Hopefully the next post will be on harvesting the ripe fruit.........

Physalis/Cape Gooseberry - An Introduction

THE MOST EXOTIC FRUIT IN OUR GARDEN IS DEFINITELY OUR PHYSALIS OR CAPE GOOSEBERRY.  They are also know as Chinese lanterns and they are normally found as decorations on deserts.  Most people don't seem to know that they can be eaten and so they are pushed aside, but they are absolutely gorgeous.

Roughly two years ago Chris decided that he was going to sow the seeds from some fruits we had bought in a shop.  I thought that they would never grow but I was wrong and we ended up with about 8 little plants.

Here is one of them today(left), looking nice and healthy along with two little nasturtium stow aways.  It will grow up to about 3ft or 1m tall.

The leaves get about 15cm long and are covered with downy hairs.

The stems are also very downy.  You can see that new shoots grow from the junctions of old ones.  Apparently Cape Gooseberries are related to the tomato plant which also produces side shoots like these.

 

On the right is the first flower appearing this year on May 10th.  It's the upside down tear shaped darker object.

Here on the left you can see the flower developing.  They seem to grow at the tops of sturdy shoots and there are three growing here although you can only see one. 

Shortly after this the flower will begin to hang down and the other flowers get pulled farther away as the stem grows upwards.

When we get fruits I will put some up pictures here so come back in a few months!

ABOUT CAPE GOOSEBERRIES

New plants are generally grown from seedlings every year however ours are in their third season now and are still going strong.  We will probably save some seeds for next year just in case.....

The fruits are round, shiny, about 1cm across and a pale orange colour with loads of seeds inside.  They grow encased in a paper case that looks like a chinese lantern. 

They can be eaten fresh on their own or in fruit cocktails.  They keep for a few months in a dry atmosphere once picked. They can also be used to make jam, sauces, used in pies, puddings, chutneys and ice cream.In Colombia, the fruits are stewed with honey and eaten as dessert and can also be dried.

Here is some information on the nutritional value and it's possible medicinal uses that I came across here

Food Value Per 100 g of Edible Portion*

Moisture	78.9 g
Protein	0.054 g
Fat	0.16 g
Fibre	4.9 g
Ash	1.01 g
Calcium	8.0 mg
Phosphorus	55.3 mg
Iron	1.23 mg
Carotene	1.613 mg
Thiamine	0.101 mg
Riboflavin	0.032 mg
Niacin	1.73 mg
Ascorbic Acid	43.0 mg

*According to analyses of husked fruits made in Ecuador.

The ripe fruits are considered a good source of Vitamin P and are rich in pectin.

In Colombia, the leaf decoction is taken as a diuretic and anti asthmatic. In South Africa, the heated leaves are applied as poultices on inflammations and the Zulus administer the leaf infusion as an enema to relieve abdominal ailments in children.

Interesting.....

For more information on how to grow these wonderful fruits come back in a few weeks when I will do a post on sowing and raising them.