My P. peruviana (Schoenberg Gold) were unfazed by two weeks of nearly 100 degrees every day this past summer. We do have cool nights though. In my experience with a lot of Andean plants, high nighttime temperatures have a more negative impact than hot days provided the plants are already somewhat adjusted.
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Very interesting about Schoenberg Gold tolerating daytime heat. When it reaches 100 during the day, what is a normal nighttime temperature?
Schoenberg is the largest Peruviana I’ve grown and have a great sweet/tart taste! Have you also tried Lucie’s Goldenberry? Same great taste, a bit smaller, and 3 weeks earlier.
On the negative side, I’ve had severe destruction of fruit within the husk during the heat of the summer. Previous posters have described this too. Have you had insects devouring the fruit of Schoenberg Gold as it ripens?
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Nighttime lows are generally in the fifties during the summer. When we have a heatwave with daytime temps around 100 or more, it still gets down to the low to mid sixties at night. On truly exceptionally hot days where we get close to 110, nighttime lows might be in the high sixties.
I haven’t tried to grow any varieties other than Schoenberg. It was late to produce in its first year, but since then it has been fruiting nearly nonstop, so the lateness hasn’t been a concern.
The only major pest I’ve had are cucumber beetle larvae. Around May my plants were nearly defoliated. They ate the fruit and left empty husks as well. I’ve also noticed them on tomatillo plants in my area.
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I thought I talked about them here, but I guess I just mentioned them once. Last fall I was able to find two different species of physalis native to Florida and other parts of the Gulf Coast, p. angustifolia (coastal groundcherry) and p. walteri (dune groundcherry). I still haven’t tasted the fruit yet, but I thought I’d bring them up because they do something my other physalis haven’t done. They sucker like crazy! Apperently they get really thick, robust roots and launch suckers up whenever it has the energy to. They are both beach/dune plants, so in their native enviroment there probably isn’t alot of nutrients. But in planted compost soil, these things have started spreading like crazy.
I just thought it was interesting because I’ve never had any Solanaceae plant sucker, and then both of the native ones I grab do. In other Physalis news, I ripped up my sunberries, the really cold nights didn’t kill them but they looked super spent afterwards. They dropped plenty of fruit though, and I’m pretty sure they are already resprouting. I also have a set of Sierra Leone Groundcherries (p. grisea) growing to be transplanted pretty soon, and 2 tomatillo seedlings.
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I neglected to get a picture but I harvested the first physalis of the year Physalis grisea, started from seed a few months ago. The plants are very small and extremely precocious. Their fruit is also small, blueberry sized, but excellent. I’m quite a fan of these so far. I’ll be keeping an eye on them to see if they’re bothered by the moth like most physalis.
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I also have some harvest from my p. grisea. Very short plants, but the fruit has a ton of flavor, almost like a orange. My sunberries have also resprouted, I thinned them this time instead of having a whole thicket. They have grown a lot taller with thicker stalks, very beautiful with the fruit hanging. Both my natives (p. walteri and angustifolia) are flowering pretty heavily, but haven’t gotten any fruit yet. I wonder if they don’t have perfect flowers. My tomatillo has also started flowering and fruiting.
So far no bug pressure. I know hornworms eat them and they are supposed to have there own moth too.
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got some seed from geltower started. supposed to grow more upright to 5ft. with bigger fruit. taste is as good as other named cultivars. very productive. starts fruiting at 65 days. got it from experimental farm.
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So tomatillos have perfect flowers, but are self-sterile. So my solo plant would never make fruit. Luckily I had some extras in a seed tray ready to go. I put them in a grow bag next to the other one, hopefully the bugs will find them and give me some nice tomatillos.
I got some sort of caterpillar looking bug on one of my plants. Kinda look like poop. Doesn’t look like a physalis moth or hornworm, any idea of what it could be? Eatting the leaves not the fruit.
Three lined potato beetle probably. The larvae cover themselves in their own poop. I had hundreds of these going to town on my cape gooseberries in 2023. None last year though for some reason.
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Ah yep, that matches with the two orange beetles I saw. I ripped the leaves off that had eggs amd any larva on them and got rid of them. Hopefully I can slow them down. If anything, they are on my natives and not my culinary plants, so as long as they don’t spread I guess its fine. From my quick google search, they are a big fan of physalis but as favored to other nightshades.
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So far this year I’m not seeing any worm damage. I don’t know if it’s because I started earlier and used earlier-ripening varieties or what.
Physalis grisea had been my favorite tasting. Aunt Molly was nice too. P grisea is just so darn tiny and is very short lived.
I attempted to pollinate P. grisea with an unlabeled physalis that I think was pubescens. The tiny flowers were pretty annoying to castrate, but at least the plant was indoors at the time so I didn’t have to worry about bees bringing pollen from other flowers. The seeds from that fruit are just now starting to come up. I’ll see soon enough if the cross actually happened or if the flower managed to self before I removed the stamens.
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Have been my favorite garden snack. Just super tasting. I just took out my sunberries because they got covered in powdery mildew. And I have volunteers everywhere for it, so I won’t be missing them for long.
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i have several cape gooseberry and several geltower groundcherry growing right now. 1st time growing geltower. supposed to be a larger more upright groundcherry than the typical plant. they just started flowering.
