How to Grow Perfect Eggplants Every Time - 5 MISTAKES to Avoid

welcome back to our garden y'all I am so excited for today's video because it is all about my favorite underrated home Garden plant The Humble eggplant given the right conditions an eggplant like this ping tongue variety from Taiwan can produce not only prolifically in abundance it is absolutely delicious and super versatile in the kitchen featuring in Cuisines from the mediterranea China India Japan Thailand among many others and yet somehow this plant does not even crack the top 10 list of most popular plants to grow in a home garden and I think that is a travesty yeah I am genuinely upset about that factoid but I also think it kind of makes sense because while these plants can produce beautifully in a home garden they're also a handful of mistakes and I've made all of these many many times that are really easy to make that result in small unhealthy plants that produce either no fruit or fruit that basically your just not going to want to eat so if you've never grown eggplant or maybe if you have struggled with it in the past I really think I really hope today's video is going to help out with that because fixing these five mistakes is what has taken us from comically horrible eggplant Harvest to Big bundles of these Delicious Fruit in our own home Garden so let's fix them together [Music] eggplant growing mistake number one has to be transplanting your eggplants into the ground at the same time as your Tomatoes eggplants don't want anything to do with being in the ground until the soil temperatures are at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit and even better 65 degrees Fahrenheit it's kind of an interesting relationship between air temperature and soil temperature but generally speaking that means you don't want to transplant out your eggplants until low temperatures overnight are at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit 50 degrees absolutely bare minimum and honestly y'all that is pushing it now keep in mind that is 5 to 10 degrees warmer than tomatoes are comfortable with tomatoes are simply a cold heartier plant than eggplant and I think that little discrepancy between tomatoes and eggplants is really where we can get ourselves into a spot of trouble there's some good news though you can still plant your eggplant seeds in your tomato seeds at the same time eggplants tend particularly in those beginning phases to grow just a little bit slower than tomatoes what that means is we can start those plants out at the same time but just transplant out the tomatoes two to four weeks ahead of our eggplants just give those eggplants a couple extra weeks at least to grow a little bit larger and wait for those nighttime temperatures to warm up a bit there's another major major benefit to letting those eggplant seedlings grow a little bit longer in a protected spot see all these little holes on our leaves here that's damage from the flea Beetle and if you grow eggplants the sad truth is you're probably going to deal with flea beetles at some point but the thing about flea Beetle damage is the larger the plant the better it is at withstanding that damage a Seedling that gets overrun by flea beetles unfortunately honestly it might just die it may never recover but a plant that is bigger like this one is just going to shrug it right off your eggplants are going to produce better through that full season if you plant them out once it's warm enough for them to thrive I actually made an entire video about pruning eggplants just because I think it's really it's a fascinating topic to me at least but it also happens to be a pretty good way to grow more food so mistake number three is failing to prune those eggplants I'm gonna link to some really good articles in the description to better describe why I think you should do this but the short of it is pruning your eggplants and there's pretty good evidence for this pruning your eggplants is going to result in more fruit bigger fruit tastier fruit and maybe even more nutritious fruit feel free to check out the full video for a step-by-step guide but the short version is that you should prune your eggplant to three or four liters so we're going to leave on the original main stem of course course and then we're going to let two or three more branches grow out and set fruit those extra branches can either be suckers that grow out of a main stem like this one right here or a naturally occurring split in the main stem like this one right here speaking of let me grab this sucker right here it's so important that we don't just prune once and then forget about it but that we keep doing it throughout the whole season maybe the single biggest complaint about homegrown eggplants is that they come out bitter and they come out small and the reason for that or at least the main reason for that is underwatering during the fruiting phase that's the point in the plant's life cycle where you're starting to see these flowers kind of Bulge out which is The Telltale sign that it is successfully pollinated and is setting a fruit so here's kind of what it comes down to when we plant out those eggplant seedlings early in the season the weather is still cool and the root system obviously is still pretty shallow so they might need water often but they don't necessarily need a ton of it because those roots are still just in that shallow layer of soil then as the season progresses the weather warms up and the plant inevitably hopefully starts producing these fruit they become much much thirstier I've grown lots of plants that looked healthy but they were actually underwatered and they produce just horrible inedible bitter fruit that no one wanted to eat some eggplant Growers will actually strategically minimize the amount of water that they give their small plants in the beginning of that season in order to encourage the plant to send Roots down deep in search of water which is kind of cool and then once flowering starts and pollination starts they'll majorly bump up that amount of water that they're giving the plants in order to support the production of fruit that you know people actually want to eat how much water your plants need depends on so many factors I would pretty much just ignore that standard one inch per week advice instead pay attention to that soil make sure that it's not drying out well beneath this surface when you poke a finger in there so I don't really have research to back this up but here's my experience the bare minimum amount of water that I need to give my tomatoes to produce good tasting tomato fruits is enough to keep the actual eggplant healthy but it's not enough to keep the eggplant producing fruit that I actually want to eat even if those tomato plants are starting to wilt a little bit they still can bounce back and give good tasting fruits and I just haven't found that to be the case with eggplant now a final word of caution with eggplants as with all my shades they can get root rot pretty easily if they are growing in waterlogged soil so you kind of have to find that balance if you are open to growing in containers like I am with these ping tongue eggplants I find that these fabric grow bags they breathe so well and they have such good drainage that they honestly kind of make it easy to hit that sweet spot but between too much water and too little water if this video is proving interesting or helpful to you I would so appreciate it if you could give the video a quick like maybe even subscribe to the channel if you're at that point I just really it really helps us out and I really really appreciate it so thank you very much for considering it and let's get back to our eggplants eggplants may be related to tomatoes but when it comes to harvesting I think it's useful to think of them more like cucumbers these fruits right here they are not going to burst they are not going to wilt or at least they're not going to do those things until it is way too late they're not going to tell you obviously when they are ready to pick instead they're just going to keep growing and growing and become bitter and inedible long before it's obvious that you should have picked them a little bit like cucumber so what we want to do is a watch for more subtle signs of ripeness a ripe eggplant is shiny and firm but has a little bit of give to it if it has started to go kind of dull and matte and soft it's gone too ripe you're basically better off picking them when they're too small than when they're too big don't worry about overthinking it too much though because you can always pick one and cut it open and use it as a reference point for future eggplants if you cut it open and the flesh is still soft and creamy and the seeds are small and soft and sort of only slightly visible you're good to go if you cut it open and the seed cavity is full of seeds and those seeds are kind of crunchy you know that you've waited too long in either case ripe or over ripe at least you're gonna know for when you go to pick that next set of eggplants speaking of harvesting do not Harvest your eggplant by hand all you're going to get is a prickle in your hand and a broken stem these eggplant calyxes these stems are like wood y'all this is a a job for a good pruner these days we have access to a plant varieties that have been bred across the centuries across continents to thrive in different climates to be better looking to be better tasting to be huge to grow small fruit to have fewer prickly bits for different colors for so many different beneficial attributes and all that breeding has resulted in some seriously cool interesting eggplant varieties we can choose from two of my favorite heirloom varieties are those Casper and Turkish orange varieties but truthfully in my experience they are also not that Hardy not that heat resistant not that disease resistant and they tend to go bitter easier than some of the other varieties that we've grown so the fifth and final mistake to avoid here is selecting a variety that is cool to look at man they are cool to look at instead of a variety that is easy to grow and that is going to keep you excited to grow eggplants for years to come if you are interested in my recommendations for some reason this ping tongue variety right here is a super popular favorite for a reason it not only produces a lot of eggplants they taste very nice they're these sort of pretty long skinny eggplant fruits that go really really well in curries it's also an heirloom variety which means that you can save the seeds from these fruit and regrow them in a future year I also love this variety called millionaire from Japan millionaire is also super productive but it's also just generally heartier and it is one of the fastest maturing fastest to set fruit varieties out there which makes it absolutely perfect if you have shorter growing Seasons shorter Summers both of these are very easy to grow and very forgiving of mistakes just when you thought we were done back for more okay I did want to share one more quick tip if you've ever struggled with getting your eggplant flowers to actually pollinate I suggest taking a tip from the Tomato Growers handbook and buying yourself a little electric toothbrush just any Cheapo one will work all you have to do is turn it on and then just gently press the toothbrush to the back of the eggplant flower here right like this just on a truss if you have multiple flowers it's really super easy to do you only have to do it for a few seconds and that is going to result in an almost perfect fruit set rate it's getting a little windy out here so I think that's going to be it for today happy eggplant growing y'all and I hope to see you on the next one

Channel: Nextdoor Homestead

Views: 49,053

Keywords: how to grow eggplants, how to grow eggplant, how to grow eggplant from seed, eggplant growing tips, grow eggplants in containers, eggplant growing mistakes, how to grow eggplant in containers, eggplant growing, eggplant care

Id: CVPz67WO00g

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2022