Growing Naranjilla

    One of the other weird plants I’m trying to grow this year is Naranjilla (Solanum quitoense). I saw it advertised in Baker Creek Seeds catalog, and thought it looked interesting. Also called ‘lulo’, this plant is more commonly grown in South America, where I believe it is popular enough to be found at markets and grocery stores. It’s another tomato relative, with large pointed leaves and dark purple veins. Some varieties have thorns, and judging from pictures I’ve found online, some do not seem to have the purple veins.

   The plant is, of course, frost sensitive and must be brought indoors during cold weather. It will fruit the same season it’s started, but needs a very long growing season or an early indoor start. It can take up to 12 months for fruit setting and ripening. So in most temperate climates, starting seed indoors in the fall seems like the best way to go about it if you don’t have a greenhouse.  They’re pretty sissy, it seems, being very intolerant of heavy wind and intense sunlight. Light shade is necessary for them to thrive.

“Ripe naranjillas, freed of hairs, may be casually consumed out-of-hand by cutting in half and squeezing the contents of each half into the mouth. The empty shells are discarded. The flesh, complete with seeds, may be squeezed out and added to ice cream mix, made into sauce for native dishes, or utilized in making pie and various other cooked desserts. The shells may be stuffed with a mixture of banana and other ingredients and baked. But the most popular use of the naranjilla is in the form of juice. For home preparation, the fruits are washed, the hairs are rubbed off, the fruits cut in half, the pulp squeezed into an electric blender and processed briefly; then the green juice is strained, sweetened, and served with ice cubes as a cool, foamy drink. A dozen fruits will yield 8 oz (227 g) of juice. Commercially, the juice is extracted mechanically from the cleaned and chopped fruits, strained, concentrated and canned or put into plastic bags and frozen.

Sherbet is made in the home by mixing naranjilla juice with corn sirup, sugar, water, and a little lime juice, partially freezing, then beating to a froth and freezing. Naranjilla jelly and marmalade are produced on a small scale in Cali, Colombia.”

  

Growing Tamarillos

    Wow…I haven’t posted in almost two months. I’ve felt bad about that. I’ve been gardening quite a bit, and haven’t had much extra time to blog about it. Hopefully that will change now.

   No, let me rephrase that. It will change now.

   I have a few plants growing this year that I’m haven’t grown before and am psyched about. One in particular is Tamarillo, or Tree Tomato.

   Not Tomatillo, mind you. That’s something else entirely. Note the ‘t’ in place of the ‘r’. Tomatillos are pretty common garden plants, especially to lovers of guacamole; a group I’m not really a part of. I’ve never had much of a desire to grow the thing.

   You’ve probably seen or heard of Tamarillos before; you just may not have realized it. You know those incredibly cheesy advertisements in newpapers and the back pages of garden magazines? You know, with a tagline like “The AMAZING Tree Tomato! Harvest 50 gazillion tons off ONE plant YEAR-ROUND!” Usually accompanied by a drawing of a happy-looking fellow in blue jeans leisurely plucking fist-sized fruit from a bushy plant taller than he is?

   Most of my previous experiments with completely off-the-wall fruits and vegetables have ended rather badly. The Kiwano, for instance, which I never got around to blogging about (for good reasons, actually) was very disappointing. Also dubbed “Jelly Melon”, (Jelly=Awesome and Melons=Awesome) it sounded like a winner. It also looked like something a Neanderthal would use to skin some great prehistoric beast. A win-win, right? Turns out it tastes like an overripe cucumber but slightly worse. Not inedible, to be sure…but why bother? You can’t even play catch with the things; they have spikes.

   So anyway, judging the reactions of other bloggers the Tamarillo hasn’t held up well in their estimation. To quote the blogger from The Way the Cookie Crumbles,  

   “IT TASTES LIKE SOAP”

 Harsh….

  The more official descriptions, like one from the California Rare Fruit Grower’s (ever the optimists?) website describes it thus: “While the skin is somewhat tough and unpleasant in flavor, the outer layer of the flesh is slightly firm, succulent and bland, and the pulp surrounding the seed in two lengthwise compartments is soft, juicy, and sweet/tart.”

   They go on to say,

  ”Ripe tamarillos may be merely cut in half lengthwise, sprinkled with sugar (and chilled if you like) and served for eating by scooping out the flesh and pulp.”

   That sounds slightly more appetizing. Either way, I started several from seed, and ended up keeping six. Like tomatoes, they germinate easily and quickly, and, when young, look similar to tomato plants except the leaves are glossier and wider. Here’s a shot of mine now, in pots, at about 5 weeks old:

   Nothing to rave about so far, but they are growing at a steady clip. I potted them in a mixture of commercial potting soil, garden loam, wood chips, vermiculite, and worm castings. Actually, it was what I had around, so I figured it was as good a mix as any. I do that a lot. Most of my best potting soil mixes I end up forgetting because it’s basically pot luck (pun intended).

   For a better idea of what the tree looks like when mature with fruit on it and all…I actually found a YouTube video of someone filming their tree……of all things….

   I’m glad, though, that there’s people out there who’d take the time to perform such a task to share with us Tamarillo-curious folks.

   It’s a sub-tropical plant, by the way. Young plants will die from frost, while the older growth trees will die back, but stay alive during snaps below 28. Fortunately, they grow well in containers, so for most of you that would be your best bet.

   I split them up. I have three in containers and three in the ground. I figure I’ll end up losing the outdoor three, but hopefully enough blankets will do the job for at least a couple of years.

   I’ll keep you posted with more as the things grow and produce fruit hopefully this year or the next!

Good resource:

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/tamarillo.html