Eggplants Today
I love everything about eggplants. I love their beautiful purple color, especially the Ichiban variety’s purple stems and most amazing flowers. I love the many varieties and sizes. We even planted a white variety (Ghostbuster) this year. What I particularly love is that they are happily growing like crazy in my community garden plot. I am blown away because in past years, my eggplant yield was less than ideal.
Our community garden has a listserv and someone posted today a question on what the plotters did who have eggplants that are nearly pick-able. Here was my response:
"Hello my Eggplant. You are Beautiful!"
Greetings from Plot #14. We planted quite a few eggplant varieties this year to see how they would do and hope to have them ready to harvest on a rolling schedule. The Little Fingers and the Ichiban are doing really well and a few are near ready to pick. One Little Fingers plant has about 9 going with some really big ones and others just starting. The Ghostbusters (white) are just beginning to peak out. The other varieties are just now barely starting to flower so much further behind the others. So I think it depends upon the variety.
We have grown eggplants in containers on our patio in the past and did not get the number that we are getting now. I am thinking it could be because the plot gets full sun all day and the eggplants like that. We got them in the ground a week and two weeks after the plot opened. We worked hard to really prepare the soil deeply for the roots to have growth space and with a lot of hand tilling, crumbling the clay into small chunks, removing rocks and clots and working it with fully done compost from our home composter bin plus some Maryland’s Leafgro from the Takoma co-op. Then when things started to get going, we gave them some compost tea from our composter. Then after planting, we added a bit of leafgro to the top as a dressing. Once it got really hot, we put a light layer of mulch around things (Mulch from Takoma Park city).
Show 'em a Little Love
One more thing. We talk to them 🙂 Sounds funny but I talk to them as I water and weed and admire them. We visit the plants frequently to see how they are doing, water when needed, etc. Maybe showing a bit of love is the key. Who knows but talking and visiting them frequently doesn’t hurt 🙂
Like this:
Like Loading...
peasforpeace 