Worth knowing:
The with parchment colours covered lanterns, contain the yellow-orange fruits of the Peruvian Cherry that are often used to decorate a sweet dessert with its slightly sour taste of a gooseberry. The fruits can be eaten fresh or prepared as a delicious chutney. As a close relative to the tomato plant and part of the nightshade family, it is also easy to cultivate and grows quickly just about a meter tall. Already after three to four months, you can harvest the first fruits of which every plant can produce a few hundred. At the end of the blossoming the calyx expands and creates slim, parchment-like casings. These protective casings host the round berry fruits that contain in its sweet-sour fruit pulp small, whitey eatable seeds. The most tasty fruits are the full ripe ones that fall off the plant by itself. Beware: the Peruvian Cherry belongs to the nightshade plants and unripe fruits are poisonous.
Natural Location:
The Cape Gooseberry originally comes from the Andes Mountain region between Venezuela and Chile. With Portuguese sailors it came to South Africa, where it is being cultivated ever since. Nowadays it can also be found in the USA, in New Zealand, India and in the South of France.
Cultivation:
Seed propagation indoors is possible throughout the year. However, for an early blossoming and early fructification the best time for propagation would be in early spring. Spread the seeds onto moist potting compost, put just a little compost earth on top and cover the seed container with clear film to prevent the earth from drying out. Don’t forget to make some holes in the clear film and take it every second or third day completely off for about 2 hours. That way you avoid mold formation on your potting compost. Place the seed container somewhere bright and warm with a temperature between 20°C and 25°C and keep the earth moist, but not wet. The first seedlings will come up after one to three weeks.
Place:
The Peruvian Cherry prefers like its relative, the tomato plant, a warm, sunny and sheltered place. After the frost season, it can be planted in the garden or shifted into a bigger pot and kept outdoors.
Care:
Water the plant regularly, but avoid waterlogging. Planted in garden soil it doesn’t need fertilizing, for tub plants however, it is possible to give fertilizer for tomato plants once a week. Due to its rapid growth, a big pot of at least six to ten litres and a climbing aid for supporting the main sprout are highly recommended.
During the winter:
After the harvest you can strongly cut back your Cape Gooseberry, and – since it is perennial, but not frost-resistant – you can shift your outdoor plant into a pot, so it can hibernate in a cool and darker place with a temperature between 5° and 10° Celsius. Without pruning you may also keep the plant in a brighter spot with a temperature around 15° Celsius during winter. Anyway, just water the plant accordingly, either less at a bright place or only modest at a darker place, and make sure that the clotted roots don’t dry out.
Picture credits:
- © © Slick - CC0 - http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
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- © Frank Laue - © Saflax - http://www.saflax.de/copyright
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