Eggplant

Friday 30 December 2011

Eggplants are a favorite of mine. They grow well inside the greenhouse, although they also tend to attract aphids from throughout the Alaska bush. Once the aphids are established, they become legion, and the productivity of the eggplant suffers greatly. Without the aphids, these plants produce and produce right up to the first frost.

Summer 2011

The trick with the clear trash bags over the fledgling plants was brilliant. The growth throughout June was phenomenal. I thought I had taken photos of it, but it looks like I didn't. In any case, the plants were as large at the end of June as they are usually by the end of the summer. That also meant that the leaves were pressing against the plastic, which was wet and potentially moldy. I removed the covers, just in time for the summer to turn cool, cloudy, and wet. As a consequence, there was no production at all - just a few quail-egg size eggplants on the Millionaire Hybrid variety. Next year, we go with the trash-can sized bags and we won't take them off until it becomes essential. The Pingtung Long variety was the worst grower of the bunch, again.

Summer 2010

Usually we grow Orient Express, but this year we also decided to grow a similar variety called Millionaire Hybrid. Both worked exceptionally well this year, even though we had a cool and rainy July. My guess: we had no aphids at all until the middle of August, and without that stress on the plants, the eggplants flourished. During the start of the season, I put about a dozen yellow cards covered with sticky glue all over the greenhouse, and that attracted the aphids preferentially. Great stuff.

How do we store these? Isa came up with fabulous idea. At the end of the season, we make endless amounts of eggplant parmesian, using the veggies from the garden. We take the cooked parmesian, cut it up into blocks, and freeze them for our eating pleasure throughout the winter. Yum!

Previous years

I've tried the traditional supermarket variety, Black Beauty. It grew a little and produced no fruit whatsoever. I've also tried the little striped eggplant, which grew well enough, but it didn't make very good parmesian.

The eggplants in August 2011. The leaves were big from the greenhouse-within- a-greenhouse trick early in the summer, but the cool weather confounded them for the rest of the season.