Eggplant

Eggplants require full sun and love heat. They can be planted in a garden or in containers. Be sure to add a generous amount of compost to your garden a couple of weeks before planting and if you have poor soil you may consider adding some lime as they do like They do like phosphorus and calcium. You can also throw a handful of compost into each planting hole when you put them into the soil. If you wish to increase the heat on them you can cover them with a cloche or floating row cover.

For an easy and free cloche simply cut the bottom of of a plastic soda bottle and place over the seedling. The eggplants will still grow well under cooler conditions but a low temperature can act to prevent the fruit from seeding. If you wish to harvest early to get smaller eggplants you will get less seedy fruits and will encourage the plant to produce more for you. Cut the eggplants off with sharp scissors rather than tearing them off.

In the fall you can pinch off any new blossoms a few weeks before the expected first frost date so that the plant concentrates its energy into ripening the fruit that is already on the plant.Eggplants like being planted near beans, peas, peppers, spinach and thyme but do not put them near fennel! In fact a gardening tidbit to store for later is that fennel is generally antagonistic with nearly any veggie in your garden. It just doesn’t play well with others.