ground cherries – Chehalem Prairie Farm

I regret planting 4 ground cherry plants.

I should have planted 40.

They are like no other fruit that I’ve ever tasted. Many people compare their flavor to strawberries, pineapples or even a super-super sweet tomato. But they’re all wrong. It’s its own unique flavor.

The texture of the skin and flesh are similar to a tiny cherry tomato. However the flavor is nearly indescribable.

It’s not overly sweet, but it’s filled with intense flavor which is best described as a “burst”. It’s not sour either. It has almost an umami undertone.

Each little fruit is wrapped in a soft papery covering. The protected fruit drops from the plant when it’s ripe and remains on the ground until someone discovers it.

My biggest gardening regret of 2021 is that I only have 4 little plants (and one of them is very stressed). Next year we’ll grow more along the fenceline. They don’t do well being grown from seed, but they do self-seed really well. Or I might try to grow from the seeds I ordered from Baker Creek.

I ate 4 ground cherries this morning without sharing with anyone (or telling anyone). #gardenguilt

Welcome to the world, little ground cherries!

God is good. He put variety on the earth in such astonishing abundance that there’s no way we can discover all his good gifts in one lifetime.

I know a little about God’s abundance. I’ve been gardening with Josh for 22 years (we even planted a garden together at the house where he lived while we were dating). We’ve grown tomatoes, beans, corn–all the garden favorites. We’ve been able to eat, preserve, ferment, dehydrate and share so much of our garden’s abundance.

But yesterday, I found out– MIDLIFE–that there’s a garden fruit that I’ve never heard of. It’s not that I’d never grown it, or never bought it at a farmers’ market, or saw the seed packet and was not interested. Nooo. This fruit had never before made an appearance in my life–ever. I had never heard of ground cherries until yesterday.

And here’s why God is good. I discovered ground cherries last night while watching a garden tour on YouTube. And, it’s not too late to plant them. Aaaaand, our local real nursery had two varieties in stock. It’s miraculous to me…I love that God put ground cherries on the earth, that I discovered them, that there was still time in the summer to plant them and that our garden store had them in stock.

I don’t know how they taste (other than hearing other people’s descriptions) but I’m excited to try a new fruit and explore all its possibilities.

The two varieties we got were Pineapple and Aunt Molly. They’re planted by the beehive, just outside of the pasture. They’re surrounded by peppermint, comfrey, marjoram, oregano, mullein, and a volunteer pumpkin plant.