Growing Epazote & Tomatillo

[kangarool]

Hopefully i can glean a bit of Mexican specialists' knowledge when it comes to gardening/growing a couple key Mexican culinary items in my garden, epazote and tomatillo, both from seed.

I only have a quick minute right now to post these facts, but if there's any other info you'd need in order to provide advice, fire away and I'll answer the moment I have a chance:

1) Live in Melbourne Australia, just coming into spring right now;

2) Have a reasonably sunny spot in a small garden ready for the two plants, but I can't say it's full on sunshine from dawn to dusk;

3) Melbourne's spring and summers are typically pretty warm to hot, say 26 Celsius in spring, avg. 30-32 in summer. In the middle of a long draught, so not much rainfall should be expected this season, either.

4) Have ordered some seeds from both from a retailer in Western Australia who is sending them in the next couple days. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find/purchase seedlings or already sprouted plants of either variety, they simply don't exist.

And finally the reason I'm growing, rather than buying, both is that I am pretty certain it's not possible to find fresh, fully grown of either plant here, although dried epazote and canned tomatillo are available.

That's it... any tips, tricks, hints, or advice for getting some successful plants grown for harvest would be much appreciated, as would insight to the nature of either plant, finicky or not, hearty and easily grown or not, etc. Basically just wondering how easy or difficult they are to maintain and grow, again any advice would be great. Thanks everyone/Kanga

[kalypso]

I can't speak to the tomatillos, but I can about epazote. It's a weed and not that hard to grow.

I live in San Diego, CA and think our whether profile is similar to yours. Warm to hot spring and summer, little rain. The soil where I live is dense and clay-like. If epazote will grow in that - and it does very well, in fact - it will grow almost anywhere. There is, however, one thing you need to watch out for with epazote. Once it gets established it has a tendency to want to spread and take over everything in it's way. You'll need to keep it well pruned/thinned. This is not a hard plant to grow.

I do know a woman in the Netherlands who has successfully grown tomatillos there using a hot house. She's been so successful she managed to get a bumper crop this year.

[BarbaraY]

I have grown tomatillos here many times. They did very well and reseeded themselves several times.

As to Epazote, I grew it once but it didn't reseed.

Temperatures here are warm spring, hot summers. I have to irrigate almost everything.

[bjcohan]

I've been growing tomatillos here in Philadelphia for years, but have always started them from small plants that I purchased. This year, none of the garden places had the plants, and I had resigned myself to a summer of bought tomatillos. They are plentiful in the many stores in Philadelphia's rapidly growing (!!!) Mexican community, but I still prefer fresh.

So, I took the section of my vegetable garden usually set aside for tomatillos and planted instead several squash plants, since fresh flor de calabaza is nearly impossible to find, and hideously expensive when it is available. We've had a bumper crop of flores de calabaza, enjoying them in quesadillas, omelets, filled with cheese then batter dipped and fried, even in glorious Mexican pizzas.

Last month, while weeding the garden, I was surprised to find several healthy and prolific tomatillo plants, all in areas where they had not been planted previously. They likely self-seeded in areas where the local fauna had dropped uneaten portions of last year's crop. So I cleared the weeds from around them, staked them, fed them, and have harvested more tomatillos than ever before.

They are, apparently, rather easy to grow. From now on, I will leave a few on each plant for the birds, and refrain from cleaning up any dropped fruit. Hopefully, history will repeat itself.

As for epazote, we've found it easy enough to grow, though prone to spider mites when brought indoors during the cold months. Several Mexican friends have found it growing among roadside weeds and simply transplanted it to pots for their patios. I've tried putting cuttings of purchased epazote into water, and they did develop roots after a couple of weeks, but the spider mites killed the plants before theywere able to establish a strong root system. This showed me that it *is* possible, and I will try again in the spring.

As a backup, I will try to grow epazote using packets of seeds my husband brought me from Mexico. Now if I could only figure out how to grow corn with huitlacoche!

So, at least with respect to the epazote, be vigilant in watching for spider mites and be prepared to treat the plant at their first appearance. Good luck with your garden!

Barb

[kangarool]

Thanks for your advice everyone. I received my two packets of seeds and am ready to plant them… again, being an absolute novice, I don’t really know where to begin, but I remember the old school soda-bottle terrarium, so I guess I’ll start there.

I started reading various internet sources about germinating seeds and growing plants from seed and am now reasonably terrified of failure… fungus and disease? Not warm enough? Not sterile enough growing medium? Not enough light? Too much water? Not enough water? Just the right amount of water but poor drainage?

Like everything else in life, I’m going to turn off the experts, plant the seeds and see what happens. I’ll post reports on progress (or lack thereof).

see ya/Kanga

[Greg]

If your particular climate is like mine in San José, California, epazote will grow fast and bolt quickly. You may want to time your plantings throughout the growing season, and not plant all of your epazote all at once.

Edited September 13, 2006 by Greg (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I grew epazote this year and live even further north than bjcohan, and I'd like to emphasize the noun "weed". You're unlikely to have trouble growing it; you're likely to have trouble preventing it from taking over.

[C. sapidus]

Epazote grows like a weed in Maryland, too. I grew it once. Towards the end of summer, an ominous profusion of seed pods formed on the plant. What with one thing and another, I failed to snip off the seed pods and the seeds scattered. The following spring, the veggie patch was covered with a zillion epazote seedlings, easily identifiable by their distinctive aroma. Fortunately, no seedlings returned the following year.

Compared with Melbourne, Maryland summers wetter and the winters are probably colder.

[kangarool]

Hi everyone, just thought I'd post a little progress report if you're interested. Basically, I've had v. good success with one specimen of each plant in my little soda-bottle terraria. ONE tomatillo and ONE epazote have sprouted and grown extremely well. I have several other little runts of both plants that are doing their best to get going, too, so all in all it's very promising.

Couple pics attached if you're interested. Will still be several months before I can get some molés and salsas happening, but it's possibly a better start than i expected.

Cheers/kanga

[LarsTheo]

The climate in Australia is actually closer to Mexico's than it is to California; i.e. rain in the summer and dry winters and opposed to California dry summers and wet winters. Epazote should be easy to grow in either climate, but I have not noticed much flavor in the epazote that I have bought. It's in all the markets here (L.A.), and so I haven't bothered to grow it, but maybe if I did, I would notice better flavor.