Growing Eggplant, How to Grow Eggplants, Growing Eggplants at Home

All about growing eggplant in a backyard or container vegetable garden. Learn how to plant, care for, and harvest eggplants when vegetable gardening.

In Asia where eggplants are native they are among the most prized of all vegetables.

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Eggplant, which are known to the British as aubergines, typically have deep purple skins.

However there are also some very beautiful white, pink, and striped varieties of eggplants to add extra color to your garden!

Growing Eggplants at Home

How to Grow Eggplant

Eggplants in Container Gardens

Eggplants are good candidates for container grown vegetables because of their shallow root systems.

Plant one eggplant per medium-sized container, or several plants in a large container.

Fertilize every week or two with liquid garden fertilizer according to the directions on the container.

Be sure to place the containers in a sunny location.

Vegetable Gardening Tips for Eggplant

Always be on the alert for signs of distress from the growing eggplants. If the plants develop pale foliage after a few weeks in the ground, it can be a sign they need a boost with 5-10-5 fertilizer.

Scatter a small handful on the earth around each plant, covering an area of about 2 feet in diameter.

Eggplant Pests & Diseases

Growing eggplant is a favorite of the cutworm. Use a cutworm collar over each plant.

With a gardener's ever watchful eye, you can solve a simple problem before it turns into a catastrophe for the vegetable garden.

If you notice that the eggplant foliage is turning yellow and brown, this is a symptom of verticillium wilt.

This plant disease is often fatal to tomatoes and peppers and cuts down severely on the production of eggplants.

The wilt stays active in the soil at least fifteen years. The most that the home vegetable gardener can generally do is to rotate the susceptible crops to keep them out of harm's way.

If you have a small garden plot that you use year after year, the easiest way of growing eggplant is to sow the seeds in a sterile potting soil and transfer the seedlings into large containers.

Best Eggplant Varieties

Black Beauty variety is ready for harvest in 80 days. This is one of the most popular growing eggplant for home vegetable gardens. Fruits are nearly black and almost round. Pale yellow flesh is excellent for breading and frying.

Black Jack and Superhybrid are two varieties that are partially tolerant to verticillium wilt.

Harvesting Eggplant

Eggplant transplanted in June will be ready to pick by the end of July.

Harvest when their outer skin is still shiny but before they grow any larger than an orange.

This is only half the size of the eggplants sold in grocery stores and at this tender age they are far superior tasting than any store bought produce.

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Growing Eggplant to Vegetable Gardening

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