Summer eggplants
Three weeks later, it's
time for a followup on my eggplant
varieties post. How
have Patio Baby and Black Beauty fared now that summer is in full swing?
Patio Baby is both
better and worse than expected. The plant is so heavily loaded with
developing fruits that I had to stake the stem upright, and we've
enjoyed a handful of tasty meals picked from the single plant.
On the other hand, I can tell it hasn't bothered to send roots out into
the surrounding soil. If I don't give it a daily half gallon of water,
the plant wilts like crazy by the middle of the afternoon.
My conclusion? If I had
to do it all over, I would keep Patio Baby on a patio where it's easy
to water and keep an eye on.
Black Beauty, in
contrast, is slow and sure and just now blooming. I haven't watered the
plants at all except when I happen to be hitting the nearby bush beans
in the same row. But Black Beauty is fine with the neglect...I'm just
not sure if the plants will manage to set fruits before winter frosts
come to call.
Among both varieties,
though, there's a major success to report on --- flea beetles haven't
been much of a problem after the plants spent their first three months
in pots. I always love it when a type of produce I thought wasn't worth
growing organically is suddenly easy with a simple tweak, and that
appears to be true in this case.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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