Ripe Cape Gooseberries
The fruit is a small round berry about the size of a marble with numerous small yellow seeds. It is bright yellow and sweet when ripe.Its most notable feature is the single papery pod covering each berry. Because of the fruit’s decorative appearance, it is sometimes used in restaurants as an exotic garnish for desserts. If the fruit is left inside the husks, its shelf life at room temperature is over 30–45 days.
Growing:
The cape gooseberry is an annual in temperate regions and a perennial in the tropics. It grows quite readily in QLD and is a good performer. In fact, the cape gooseberry seems to thrive on neglect. High yields can be achieved with little to no fertiliser.
Cultivation:
The cape gooseberry will grow in any well-drained soil but does best on sandy to gravely loam. On highly fertile alluvial soil, there is much vegetative growth and the fruits fail to colour properly. Very good crops are obtained on rather poor sandy ground. Where drainage is a problem, the plantings should be on gentle slopes
Cape Gooseberries in a pod
or the rows should be mounded. The plants become dormant in drought. A single plant may yield 300 fruits. The fruit is harvested when it falls to the ground, but not all fallen fruits may be in the same stage of maturity and must be held until they ripen. It may take some experience to tell when the calyx-enclosed fruits are fully ripe. The fruits will turn a distinctive bright yellow when ripe.
Areas grown:
There it has long been grown on a large scale and is abundantly naturalised, as it is also in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Tasmania. It was welcomed in New Zealand where it is said that “the housewife is sometimes embarrassed by the quantity of berries [cape gooseberries] in the garden,” and government agencies actively promote increased culinary use.
Alternative names:
golden berry (South Africa), physalis , Inca berry, cape gooseberry, giant ground cherry, Peruvian groundcherry, Peruvian cherry (U.S.), poha (Hawaii), ras bhari (India), aguaymanto (Peru), uvilla (Ecuador) and uchuva (Colombia).
