growing Aubergines

[Billal]

salaams to all.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has experience of growing aubergines in UK climate.

My seedlings are 4 weeks old and now looking ready to be potted into larger pots.

I will try and upload some pics soon.

I need advice on when to start feeding them.

:)

[Riz]

salaam billal.

later on i will post up my aubergine pics from last season, i wasn't that successful, i didn't realize the root ball gets really massive and you will need a really big pot.. please look out for the pics later on today sometime..

I have 4 seedlings that i put out today to harden them off, as i grew them indoors...

Riz

[Billal]

Salaam Riz

I have just put mine out for a couple of hours today too.

I have bought some slightly bigger pots today

I can just see some roots showing at the bottom so i was thinking of repotting them all later.

[Riz]

good idea billal..

aubergines need plenty of room for the rootball to grow and it doesnt flower untill septemeber so thats when the fruit will grow from it..

[Riz]

regards the pots that you are using billal, just because you can see the roots creeping out underneath the pots don't always mean you have to repot in a bigger container, roots generally follow moisture downwards, but there should be plenty of space for the roots even though they are showing through, you can check this by removing the plant from the pot and checking it out yourself..

here are some pics of the aubergine plant in july last season as you can see it is pretty healthy and big..

and a pretty flower grows from it..

and i realized afterwards that the pot wasnt big enough, if i grew them in B&Q buckets it would have been better, thats the plan this season anyways...

[Billal]

The plant looks great.

But you mention it didnt do too well, do you think that was because the pot was not big enough or not a great summer last year?

[Riz]

i think it was the size of the pot In september when it needed the space, it was already root bound, and one small aubergine poked its nose out of the flower and withered away and died...

A hot summer would definitely help, but i know people who have grown these in the garden in the ground and had really healthy beautiful aubergines from it, and i guess it depends in were in UK you live as well, i live down south and the weather is a tiny bit better than up north, so it all helps,

[Riz]

a pic of the aubergine seedling, 2 in one pot... i will separate later

[Riz]

salaam billal..

whats the latest on your aubergine seedlings..? i hope you have left them outdoors....

[Riz]

i separated my aubergine plants, one of them is in the ground, the other still in the pot..

its been raining all day , so last night i scattered some slug and snail repellent over the veg patch and in all the chili containers.....

[Riz]

aubergine in the veg patch...

[Billal]

They are doing very well I have 8 plants in large 5 litre pots which have grown 1 and half feet tall, the others i delayed in putting them in larger pots and they are still quite small. I intend to keep them in pots .

[Riz]

good news..

[Riz]

here is my aubergine plant i didnt want to grow it in the ground and i ran out of huge containers, so i potted it in a old soil bag, its doing really well i feel..

here is a pic

[Riz]

just a little update on the aubergine/eggplant

It has nearly doubled the size since last week, Today i saw a little flower developing so i am well pleased with it, This is the second season i have grown aubergines the first season i had the plant in a small container and it quickly went rootbound and at the end i didnt get any fruit from it but this season i am hopeful

:)

[Riz]

The aubergine plant has almost doubled in size since last week, its the good weather we`ve had recently... I have neglected this plant for a long time and i am impressed by it,

[Riz]

most things in the garden are blooming and the aubergine plant is no diffrent, this is my 3rd season of growng aubergines, didnt have much luck the last 2 seasons...

the plant has several bud sites and some of the flowers are opening up, as you can see from the pic i have grown this inside an old soil plastic sack aswell..

[~Obsidian~]

How is this plant doing now? Any sign of aubergines?

[Riz]

How is this plant doing now? Any sign of aubergines?

it has multiple grow sites and some fruit is emerging from the flowers. and its a healthy looking plant, so hope it all goes well for me :)

[Riz]

2 pics of the aubergine plant.

you can see the multiple flower heads

[Riz]

just had a look today at the aubergine plant, the small fruit that is developing has just rotted away on the stem ( a few of them have) its the damp weather we have been having for the past week not enough airflow to keep the damp away, so i have re located the plant in another part of the garden,inshallah that will work...

[~Obsidian~]

Oh dear :( iA it'll go better this time

[Riz]

here is a pic of the little aubergine popping his head out..

[Riz]

Salaam from rainy london...

This is the same stage my aubergines grew to last season before it went really cold and they stopped growing... lets see if i have better luck this time around..

[Riz]

salaam everyone...

Its getting cold now well after all it is october,, the aubergine has grown a little since the last pic :)

[Riz]

it has a grown a tiny bit ..... :)

[globalart4u]

certainly mashallah much larger than our little aubergines - inshallah we will grow them earlier next year.

[Riz]

certainly mashallah much larger than our little aubergines - inshallah we will grow them earlier next year.

salaam global :)

I started mine off really early, i germinated the seeds in mid may. The weather just hasn't been warm enough ( aubergines need lots of heat). If i had a greenhouse i would have faired a lot better i would have been harvesting the aubergines in mid august :)

[globalart4u]

inshallah we will grow in may the greenhouse was not finished until mid july and it has holes everywhere the wind has now blown away the hard plastic we put on to replace the glass so it is cold in there and i was surprised they even grew.

[Riz]

Went out to have a look today and saw that the stem was moulding up and spreading.. Small fruit as well quite disappointing but when you grow aubergines outdoors in UK you are the mercy of the weather... they really need to be grown in a hot house or poly tunnel, not given up though shall try them again next year might have to be a bit creative though.... ;)

[~Obsidian~]

Ah dang :( well done for getting that far though!

...are you going to eat it :S

[Riz]

Naaa not going to eat it..

i binned it.. :)

[solanum]

that's so disappointing. lilac flowers were nice though. how do people cope with such disappointment :eek: after months of hope?

[Riz]

^ the aubergines need lots of heat after they have flowered but mine was outdoors all the time and the weather was crap so they didn't finish off properly.. but i gave a seedling to a friend who had a greenhouse it was so impressive, huge fruit around 7 to 10 aubergines from each plant.. you have a greenhouse you should try it .. :)

[solanum]

my plants were in the greenhouse but the flower rotted away each time, there was only one that didn't and only a tiny excuse of an aubergine showed up.

[Riz]

my plants were in the greenhouse but the flower rotted away each time, there was only one that didn't and only a tiny excuse of an aubergine showed up.

could be due to over watering.. how often did you water them !!?

the rootball of the aubergine gets quite large , its best to pot them in B&Q buckets which cost 99 pence, just drill some holes in the base of the bucket and it comes a container much cheaper than actual pots which costs 2.99 each, they come in black and orange colours...

[Kirsten]

Allright, I'm taking a go at eggplants this year.

I planted them in the little paper pots I made - so far I have six healthy germinates and two more that were "late germinates" (i planted two in each pot, kept the big one, but felt bad tossing out the small ones). I'm kicking myself though because I should have started them months ago - they won't be ready to plant out until probably June-ish, and temperatures here are already 65+ degrees. I feel like I just wasted a lot of time given how long the eggplant season is :(

[~Obsidian~]

Alright Kirsten!

The only time you've wasted is the time you spend lamenting something that you could not change :) don't worry about it, you've got them now and thats all that matters!

I don't like culling any plants either, they grew, let them live!

[Kirsten]

Eggplant at a week and a half... these things are slow!!!!! Going to repot them into larger pots today.

I had 12 for 12 germination - one died when I tried to move it, and the last two came up today but they were so close to the existing (bigger) plants that I didn't want to risk pulling them out, so I just cut them. :(

http://i44.tinypic.com/2cz3waw.jpg

[Kirsten]

Moved 7 into large pots yesterday, kept 2 because they weren't that big enough yet. Forgot to water said 2, thus they wilted and died in the sun today. oops :(

[Kirsten]

lol I think I have an angsty plant that just decided it didn't want to live. Two days ago it was leaning pretty heavily towards the window, so I just rotated the pot - that's all I did, I swear! Didn't even touch the plant or pile in soil or anything. By evening, it had wilted - but didn't quite wilt, it just sort of fell over and lay there on the soil trying to decide what to do with itself. I tried to stand it back up but it would just fall back over limply, but the leaves and stem weren't wilted at all. I gave it up as a lost cause.

And then today I woke up and mysteriously... said plant has decided to come back to life and was standing up with leaves outstretched, nice and green and happy. I hope it's a survivor! :p

[~Obsidian~]

LOL moody plant! You sure its not a mechanism or something? I remember the bean plant leaves used to hang downward at night and during the day they would be oustretched.

[Kirsten]

I'm pretty sure :) It just lay there for two days while all its fellow eggplants grew nice and big, and then it randomly stood back up. Who knows...

[Riz]

salaam kirsten..

well ill be joining you soon in this thread, i bought some new seeds "finger aubergines" not started the seeds of yet maybe next week :)

[pomegranate]

i've bought some aubergine seeds as well.
the type of seeds i have are called aubergine farmers long f1
these are very long aubergine
i will sow these seeds in a week or so!
very excited!!!:):GreenThumbs:

[Riz]

these are the ones i will grow, not germinated any yet :)

aubergine orlando F1

[Kirsten]

Here are mine... they're still really small and I started them about 6-7 weeks ago :(

http://i39.tinypic.com/30sik4k.jpg

[~Obsidian~]

Patience, Kirsten :p They look healthy though, on the plus side!

[Riz]

i sowed my aubergines today, 2 seeds in each pot, so inshallah 6 altogether.. ill be growing only 2 plants this season, made some room in the back of the garden so they will be grown in the ground this season :)

[Riz]

my aubergines have germinated and are now tiny little seedlings :)

[Kirsten]

Riz, how are yours doing?

Here are mine - still no fruits but I did see some flower buds about to open on 3 of the plants:
http://i28.tinypic.com/t9v9qh.jpg

[Riz]

hey K..

you have a few aubergines growing huh ! :)

last week we had hailstones were i live and they destroyed the aubergine seedlings, decapitated them, i had 4 of them growing.. so now its too late to start some more :violin:

[Kirsten]

Oh bummer! That sucks, I'm sorry :(

[farah]

Oh I had an aubergine earlier this year it didn't germinate at all, it was on of those that comes in a paper cup with the soil already in but anyway yours look brilliantly healthy on the decking how many months before they give you some vegetables to cook?

[Kirsten]

OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

We have spider mites! It took me forever to figure out what the damn problem was and all the leaves were turning white and crinkly and falling off. Finally I realized that there were these tiny, tiny, tiny little dark red dots everywhere... that seemed to be moving... and then I realized there was tiny webbing between the stems. ARRRGH.

So today was day 1 of serious warfare... sprayed down with tomato leaf spray (trying to take the organic route here) and wiped them all down with wet paper towels. Must have wiped off a gazillion tiny red dots. Used tiny scraps of wet paper towels to pull out the webbing between the flower buds (and while I was there I noticed the occasional aphid too, damn it). Moved worst affected eggplants (2 out of the 5, though I think they all have some evidence of mite damage) to the shade and watered intensely since the mites are supposed to favor hot and dry conditions, not to mention they suck loads of water out of the plant.

Plan for tomorrow - repeat as needed.

I know I could probably kill off the whole infestation with a heavy bout of pesticides, but I'm just so reluctant to go the chemical route... especially since I actually intended to eat off of this plant (dunno if that's going to happen now, we had some flowers but I have no idea if we got pollination or not) so I think I will try the manual labor + tomato leaf spray + lots of persistence and repetition, and see if that helps. It did get rid of my aphid problem last year...

[edibles]

Good luck kirsten

[Nife180]

OMG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

We have spider mites! It took me forever to figure out what the damn problem was and all the leaves were turning white and crinkly and falling off. Finally I realized that there were these tiny, tiny, tiny little dark red dots everywhere... that seemed to be moving... and then I realized there was tiny webbing between the stems. ARRRGH.

So today was day 1 of serious warfare... sprayed down with tomato leaf spray (trying to take the organic route here) and wiped them all down with wet paper towels. Must have wiped off a gazillion tiny red dots. Used tiny scraps of wet paper towels to pull out the webbing between the flower buds (and while I was there I noticed the occasional aphid too, damn it). Moved worst affected eggplants (2 out of the 5, though I think they all have some evidence of mite damage) to the shade and watered intensely since the mites are supposed to favor hot and dry conditions, not to mention they suck loads of water out of the plant.

Plan for tomorrow - repeat as needed.

I know I could probably kill off the whole infestation with a heavy bout of pesticides, but I'm just so reluctant to go the chemical route... especially since I actually intended to eat off of this plant (dunno if that's going to happen now, we had some flowers but I have no idea if we got pollination or not) so I think I will try the manual labor + tomato leaf spray + lots of persistence and repetition, and see if that helps. It did get rid of my aphid problem last year...

Dang! That sucks, I hope you can get rid of them. I don't know if the tomato leaf spray will work, I found some helpful links for you.

http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-spider-mites.htm
http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin/en/info_verte/fiches/pesticides_nat.htm

[Kirsten]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

I went on the offensive again and I think I got rid of, oh, say, about a million of the stupid things. Then I noticed that one of the new baby leaves was curled around with a distinctive spider mite web, so I just pulled it off - and out fell a big green caterpillar :eek: that combined with aphids... well at least my problem isn't as bad as Riz's in the Brussels sprouts thread, but if all this keeps up and I don't get fruit I might just ditch the eggplants next year.

Hm... we should come up with a grading system for insect invasions!

my tomato aphid infestation: :rolleyes:
my eggplant problem: :(
Riz's brussels sprouts: :eek:

(I had wanted to make a bunch of eeks, but apparently there's a limit to how many you can use)

[Kirsten]

And warfare continues. I think I see far fewer bugs on the plants now (maybe around 10 on each leaf, as opposed to a million?) and the coolest thing ever - two baby eggplants are forming! I thought the base of the flower (since the flower dried up) had been swelling up, but since I've never planted eggplants before I didn't know (and the flower faces down, too...) so I had to get down on the ground and look up and I saw the base of a tiny purple-back ball.

Unfortunately both of those are on the infested two plants, so I don't know if they'll recover, but I certainly hope so...!!

[Riz]

^ you might be over the worst of it K. They like lots of heat too, interestingly enough i didn't get any flowers on mine till early September.....

[Kirsten]

I think I remember reading that you binned yours because it wasn't edible, but how late was it before you got edible-sized fruit if it didn't flower until September?

(I go back to school in less than a month and I will NOT be happy if this plant I have coddled since March produces fruit AFTER I leave!)

[Riz]

in mid October i got a fat and juicy aubergine, because it wouldn't stop raining it got mouldy and i binned it :)

[Kirsten]

We have awfully hot weather here... upwards of 90 degrees every day... hopefully that will keep them happy and fry the STUPID INSECTS GAAAAAH

ahem.

http://i31.tinypic.com/35klxxt.jpg

[Tania]

Congratulation Kirsten. Its the first time when i see aubergine on the plant.

[Kirsten]

Thanks Tania! I'm so proud of it :) I hope it grows to an edible size though, the plant isn't very healthy right now as you can see...

I went outside yesterday to continue the fight against the stupid bugs and then pulled up a chair and just sat in front of them, musing... my mom laughed at me and was like "are you just going to sit and watch and wait for it to get big?"

[Riz]

I went outside yesterday to continue the fight against the stupid bugs and then pulled up a chair and just sat in front of them, musing... my mom laughed at me and was like "are you just going to sit and watch and wait for it to get big?"

your mum is funny :)

the flower is really beautiful huh, almost lilac :). you may get a few fruit from every pot inshallah.. :)

[Tania]

After me, the plant is carring on with her life and the latest leaves are healthy.