Physalis is a large plant family from the nightshade group. The Andean berry with its bright orange-red, slightly sour-tasting fruits belongs to this family, as does the poisonous lantern flower native to us. The plants are very pretty to look at and are real beginner plants - they are easy to grow and just as easy to propagate.
How to propagate Physalis plants?
Physalis can be easily propagated via seeds or cuttings. When propagating seeds, the pulp of a berry is allowed to dry on a kitchen towel to extract the seeds. To propagate cuttings, you need 10 cm long shoots from an old plant, which you plant in potting soil and keep evenly moist.
Propagate Physalis from seeds
Physalis seeds are available in every garden center and of course also online. However, it is not necessary to buy new seeds every year. Instead, you can get seeds yourself from fruits you have harvested or purchased. All you need to do is cut open a berry and scrape the flesh off with a knife on a kitchen towel. You should spread it as thinly as possible – like butter on bread – and then let it dry. You can sow the seeds collected after a few days immediately or store them in a bag until next spring.
Propagate Physalis via cuttings
It's even easier to propagate Physalis using cuttings. However, the prerequisite for this is that you already have an old plant. Remove some of the shoots growing from the leaf axils in autumn or spring. They should be approximately 10 centimeters long. The optimal time for propagating cuttings is at the beginning of the growing season in spring, as the young plants then develop roots more easily.
Cultivate cuttings
Then proceed as follows:
- Fill a pot (approx. 10 to 12 centimeters in diameter) with potting soil.
- Remove the lower leaves of the cutting.
- Place the shoot about a third deep into the soil.
- You can also dip the bottom end in root powder first.
- Place the pot in a warm and bright place.
- Keep the cutting evenly moist.
- Fertilizing is not necessary as long as the young plant has no roots yet.
As soon as the first roots have developed (you can tell this by the fact that new leaf buds are forming), you can place the plant and the pot outside or plant it out. However, potted plants should be replanted into a larger pot.
Tips & Tricks
Be careful of plant seeds or cuttings from your neighbor's old plants: Such plants are usually passed on again and again and it is rarely known what type of Physalis they actually are. Although the fruits all look quite similar, not all of them are edible. The pretty lantern flower is poisonous, but can easily be confused with the edible and very he althy Andean berries.
