Growing Eggplants For The First Time This Year - Page 2

 

White_Noise_1@webtv.net (EVP MAN) wrote in


I might add that slugs and flea beatles will devour the plants. Around
here (mid Wilamette Valley, Oregon) slugs are *everywhere*, and they can
decimate a young eggplant plant overnight.

If your springs are long and cool, don't be in a hurry to plant the
seeds, or put them outside. As others have said, the plants won't grow
if it's cold - they will just sit there and be eaten by insects and
slugs.

If you are adventurous, try a few different varieties. Japanese white
egg grows well and sets dozens of white egg sized and shaped fruit per
plant, and they are tender and quite tasty. Ping Tung is a long dark
purple fruit that gets easily a foot long, and is (IIRC) green fleshed
and also very tasty. I think I got about 15 fruit per plant, maybe more
- they are very prolific. There is one that grows small oblong
lavender-white fruit (I forget what it is called) that does well here,
also.

I planted about 30 plants last year. I lost several to the slugs before
I got them under control, several were devoured by flea beetles before I
discovered Neem, and a few varieties just don't seem to like it here.
The ones that did produce did fairly well and I had eggplants coming out
my ears and then some. I must have chucked a hundred pieces of fruit in
the compost pile by the end of the season - 30 plants is really too many
:-)