How to grow tomatillos

Tomatillo is a warm-season relative of the tomato, grown for its tart, green fruit that develops inside a papery husk and forms the base of salsa verde and other cooked and raw sauces. The plant grows into a sprawling, floppy bush three to four feet tall and wide, closer in habit to a large pepper plant than a staked tomato, and it holds a bed through the whole frost-free season, setting fruit continuously rather than in one flush. The husk itself signals ripeness, drying from green to a tan, papery lantern as the fruit inside fills it out.

The hardest part of growing tomatillo well is pollination, not pest or disease pressure. South Dakota State University Extension explains that tomatillo flowers are self-incompatible and need cross-pollination from a second, genetically distinct plant to set fruit reliably. A second-year gardener who plants a single tomatillo, treating it like a self-fertile tomato because space is tight, gets a lush, floral plant that produces almost no fruit; without a second plant nearby, the flowers keep opening and dropping unfertilized, and the failure looks like a pest or fertility problem when the real cause is simply having grown just one.