I didn't buy seeds, so I don't know which kind I'm growing, but my mom bought ground cherries at her local farmers market so I knew they could grow here. I saved seeds from some of those ground cherries. I started the seeds inside with no grow light in April and these spindly tiny things came up and got super leggy but the leaves never got bigger. Starting inside was a huge fail. Grow light would've worked I bet.
I put some seeds in the ground where I planned to grow them, I had tiny cages set up for them. The seeds sprouted and grew nice leaves on shorter stems, very hardy. I dug up one sprout and replanted it a little further away so I let two plants grow.
A little after that, I saw something called "golden berries" in the grocery store and they reminded me of ground cherries. I looked it up and they are related. I planted some seeds of that and started a golden berry plant. That one sprouted about the same, though it was started so late, I don't have berries yet.
All the plants grew
The golden berry grows straight up more or less, and uses the cage. The ground cherries sprawl and don't need the support, though I use it to tie branches out of the way because it is in the walkway. I didn't give them nearly enough room.
They grow a ton of fruit! They just yellow as the husk gets dry and fall to the ground. You pick them up, unwrap and enjoy.
The golden berry plant has just started making fruit. You can see the husk on those has the purple all through it, unlike the ground cherries which are solid green. I can't wait to see what the full, ripe husk is like. Here is a golden berry flower:
Ground cherry harvest:
