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- Tomatilloes have big
potential for U.S. growers
- By Mary and Bill Weaver
Pennsylvania Correspondents
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- Toma Verde tomatillo. (Photo courtesy of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Albion, Maine.)
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- Tomatilloes, the main ingredient in green salsa, have potential as a specialty crop for U.S. growers, even in the North, according to studies done by Rosanna Freyre at the University of New Hampshire.
“Tomatilloes grow very well in our northern latitudes, and are extremely productive and insect and disease problems are almost non-existent,” said Freyre.
However, there is currently very little commercial tomatillo production in the United States, even in the Southwest, according to Charlie Kemp of the Keithly-Williams Seed Co. in California’s Imperial Valley.
“Tomatilloes are generally imported from Mexico, brought into the country at the Baja and Nogales crossing points, either packed in wooden crates with the husks still on, (for shipping and shelf life) for grocery store sales, or in 55-gallon drums, mixed with peppers, for U.S. salsa makers,” said Kemp.
One current U.S. tomatillo grower on a smaller scale is David Batchelder of Stratham, N.H., who has been growing them for his organic community supported agriculture operation for the past 10 years.
“I grow them like tomatoes,” he said. He starts the plants of the variety Toma Verde from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in the greenhouse between mid-April and the first of May. It is a large-fruited, early variety.
“We expect frost any time to the first of June, so we don’t put tender plants out till then,” he said. “We get six to eight weeks picking, starting in mid-August. Tomatilloes are extremely easy to grow. We don’t stake them. We just let them sprawl. I’ve had no problems I can think of, except some occasional hornworms. We have an awful problem with early blight on tomatoes up here, but I can’t recall that being a problem with tomatilloes. They also volunteer very easily.”
Another U.S. grower, George Fabrizio, grows three to four acres of tomatilloes in New Jersey. He is also growing the variety Toma Verde. “They’re very easy to grow,” he said. “We use a systemic pesticide on the root system at planting. That keeps the insects away.”
Fabrizio sells his crop to several small grocery stores in his area with Hispanic customers. Tomatilloes are packed in pints, with l2 pints to a box, with the husks on. The largest of his stores moves 50 to 60 boxes a week. Fabrizio charges $2 a pint, and the stores charge $3.50 to $4 a pint.
“There’s definitely a demand for them in our area,” said Fabrizio, but cautions that potential growers should be sure they have a market before planting tomatilloes.
The big potential market for U.S. commercial growers, though, is not with the market stand and grocery store sales, but in supplying U.S. salsa makers, and here’s where the problem comes in. The papery husks surrounding the tomatillo are no problem to remove on a small scale. “You just let the husk dry a little, and then you peel it off, like peeling an onion,” said Fabrizio. But on a commercial scale, removing the husks is both time consuming and labor-intensive.
In Mexico, where labor is relatively cheap, workers remove the husks by hand, but since they are paid only about $5 to $l0 a day, the labor cost is not prohibitive. U.S. tomatillo growers would have to find another method.
Robert Kime, the head of the Food Science Pilot Plant at New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., has been working on this problem. “The husks are sticky like glue on my fingers,” he said. “That thing is stuck tight. We tried an abrasive peeler, even a potato and carrot peeler that chews the skins off. It didn’t phase that husk.”
But Kime and associates were able to develop a method of removing the problem husks without hand labor, as well as a method for making tomatillo puree.
In Freyre’s work at the Kingman Research Farm at the University of New Hampshire, she did variety and yield trials for two years, using five available commercial varieties, three from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, one from Burpee and one from Gurney’s.
She also trialed several of the numbered varieties from the USDA-ARS Plant Genetics Resources Unit in Geneva, N.Y., which holds the entire collection of tomatillo germplasm in the U.S. In the second year of the study, she only included four of the varieties that had shown promise in the first season.
“We found all the tomatillo genotypes to be extremely productive in our conditions, using black plastic mulch and drip irrigation,” said Freyre. “Total yields ranged from l3.3 to 28.4 tons per acre.”
Over the two years, Burpee’s variety Tomatillo had the highest yields. Two of the numbered introductions outyielded some of the commercial cultivars, and numbered variety PI 3098l2 had the highest fruit weight.
One variety from Johnny’s, De Milpa, is an heirloom variety from Mexico, where it grows untended in cornfields. This variety had the smallest fruit and lowest yields. However, according to Freyre, its fruit do not crack, and it is the variety with the best storage, remaining green and firm for up to two weeks even at room temperature.
Because harvesting the tomatilloes from the large, vigorous, and prostrate plants was time consuming and very labor intensive, in the second year of the study, Freyre included an observation plot of l0 plants of the Burpee variety Tomatillo using a basket-weave system, often used for tomatoes, to hold the plants upright. Harvest was more comfortable and easier with this system, she found, and was also considerably faster, indicating “the potential use for this trellising system for tomatillo culture.”
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