![]() ![]() melongena thrives in full sun, with a minimum of six hours of sunlight per day, and fertile, well draining soil with a pH between 5.5-7.2.Īs members of the Solanaceae family, along with peppers and tomatoes, it’s no surprise that eggplants prefer hot weather. You can check your seed packet or nursery tag for mature dimensions. Space plants 18-30 inches apart, depending on the variety. Plant seedlings or starts at the same depth as the container they were growing in and water in well. Prepare your planting area by working the soil six to 12 inches deep and mixing in a couple handfuls of compost and some landscape sand if you need to improve drainage. To be on the safe side, wait two to three weeks after your last frost date before setting plants into the garden. Nursery starts or seedlings can be transplanted to the garden when all risk of frost has passed and the soil has warmed to at least 60☏. Start by placing your pots in a sheltered location in the garden for one hour per day, gradually increasing the time spent outdoors over the course of a week or 10 days. Hardening off is the process of acclimating young plants to outdoor conditions. When all danger of frost has passed, and seedlings are at least four inches tall, you can transplant them into the garden, after you have hardened them off. When plants have a couple of true leaves you can repot them into a larger container filled with potting mix. Once seedlings have emerged, place the tray in the sunniest spot possible or under a grow light. Seeds will germinate as long as the soil is at least 60☏, but you may be waiting up to 21 days. If the soil is warm enough, germination should occur within 10 days. It will also help to cover seed trays or containers with plastic wrap to retain heat and moisture. Germination can take a while to occur if the soil temperature is below 80☏, so you may wish to invest in a heating mat. Sow seeds in moistened seed starting mix, just quarter of an inch deep, and keep soil evenly moist but not waterlogged. If you’re going to grow your own from seed, you’ll need to start them indoors eight to 10 weeks before the average last frost date in spring for your area. Seed to harvest usually takes between 100 and 120 days, so timing is key. While the fruit of this plant takes many different forms, each cultivar or hybrid comes from the same species, S. ![]() Thankfully the people of Toledo were right about eggplant, yes? Who else feels bad that Gerard missed out on this delectable treat? He finishes his treatise on eggplants with this word of advice: “It is therefore better to esteem this plant and have it in the garden for your pleasure and the rarenesse thereof, than for any vertue or good qualities yet knowne.” This, despite acknowledging that “The people of Toledo eat them with great devotion.” This is perhaps why Gerard called eggplant the “Madde Apple,” and why he writes, “doubtlesse these Apples have a mischievous qualitie, the use whereof is utterly to bee forsaken.” You can see where the plant got its name! The reference to the “great Nightshade” is telling, because some people believed that eggplant was poisonous like Atropa belladonna, or “deadly nightshade,” another member of the same plant family. “Raging Apples hath a round stalke of two foot high, divided into sundry branches….the floures of a white colour, and sometimes changing into purple, made of six parts wide open like a star… which being past, the fruit comes in place, set in a cornered cup or huske after the manner of great Nightshade, great and somewhat long, of the bignesse of a Swans egge.” In his 1597 book, Gerard’s Herball, the English herbalist Thomas Gerard listed it as the “Madde Apple,” and wrote this in his description: Over time, the fruit made its way to Europe, appearing in various writings and illustrations of the Medieval era and before. ![]() In “History and Iconography of Eggplant,” an article written for Chronica Horticulturae, the journal of the International Society for Horticultural Science, Marie-Christine Daunay and Jules Janick explain that “Eggplant was domesticated from wild forms in the Indo-Burma region with indications that it was cultivated in antiquity.”ĭaunay, a French scientist who specializes in vegetables in the Solanaceae family and eggplant in particular, and Janick, a professor of horticulture at Indiana’s Purdue University, also write that eggplant is probably native to a wide region encompassing India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China, and can be found growing wild in all these places. People have appreciated the versatile nature of eggplant for thousands of years. ![]()
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