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Growing eggplant (aubergine)
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A foot long Chinese eggplant
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The traditional eggplant, or aubergine, everyone seems to know about
has large egg shaped purple or black fruits that need salting before cooking.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The home gardener can also grow
white or streaked, cylindrical or even smaller eggplants, and more often
than not they don't need salting.
From experience it can sometimes be a little difficult to start off,
but once it's reached seedling size it rarely looks back.
Growing conditions
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Eggplant can only be started off in the hottest months of the year.
It loves warm temperatures, braving hot humid days better than any
other vegetable.
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They love sunny well drained beds.
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Eggplants prefer a soil manured the previous season.
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In a 4 bed rotation system eggplant
is grown with other acid loving vegetables like tomatoes, capsicums
(bell peppers) and chillies (hot peppers).
Garden care
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Seeds should be sown into seed raising mix.
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Germination is best achieved at soil temperatures around 25 degrees
celsius (77 degrees farenheit).
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Ideally they should be sowed a week after capsicums and three weeks
after tomatoes.
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Before transplanting out make sure you add a little potash to the
soil to encourage flowering.
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Transplant the seedlings into bigger pots or garden beds once they're
an inch tall.
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In the past we've grown two varieties of eggplant, a heritage variety
from the Diggers Club called Long White Streaked and a Chinese variety
we bought as seeds from an Asian supermarket. The Chinese variety's
packet describes them as having "smooth deep parplish black fruits"
that need 6-8 weeks to reach "marturity". However, I didn't
get any deep parplish black fruits, or even deep purplish black fruits.
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Eggplant is self pollinating but if you grow different varieties
closely together bees can cross pollinate them. Apparently you need
to put a paper bag or something similar over the flowers if you want
the variety to remain pure and not cross-pollinate. A lot of effort.
I don't think as a home gardener we could be bothered.
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We haven't had too many pest or disease problems with eggplants.
They just hate cold weather (frosts will wipe them out).
Harvest time
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It's difficult to decide when it's the right time to pick your eggplants.
We've generally taken a guess, making sure not to leave it too late.
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Experiment a little. Bitter eggplants with brown seeds inside are
getting too old.
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Harvest eggplant by cutting off the fruit with scissors or a knife.
Don't pull it off.
Last Updated
17 November, 2008
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