How to grow ground cherries

Ground cherry is a low, sprawling relative of the tomato, grown for small, sweet, gold fruit enclosed in a papery husk that looks like a miniature lantern. The plant rarely grows more than a couple of feet tall and spreads rather than stands upright, filling in low around taller crops instead of needing a trellis. Gardeners grow it for fruit eaten straight off the plant, cooked into preserves, or dried, with a flavor between a tomato and a tropical fruit. It tolerates heat and dry spells well once established, a forgiving crop for uneven summer watering.

The hardest part of growing ground cherry well is harvesting by a rule that runs opposite most fruiting crops. University of Minnesota Extension notes a ripe husk turns dry and papery and the fruit drops on its own, and Penn State Extension adds that fruit falling still green rarely ripens further. A second-year gardener used to picking fruit off the vine either picks husks too early, while the fruit is still tart, or ignores what has fallen as litter under the plant. Because the fallen fruit is the actual harvest and holds only a week or two, a gardener not checking the ground regularly loses part of the crop to rot before tasting it at its best.