Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Eggplants of our Dreams


We love eggplants, and this is our first season that we are really having a successful crop of them. The process of getting this to happen has been a long one, but now as the harvest begins, it seems all worth it. The eggplants were seeded indoors on a heat mat back in January and February. Then they grew in the greenhouse until May when we transplanted them outside. We tried to really baby these plants, knowing how susceptible they are to both cold and flea beetle damage. So we planted them in black ground cloth (landscaping fabric), cutting a hole for each plant to grow through. Then we carefully covered the whole row with a sheet of floating row cover and weighed down the edges to keep out pests.

The plants are strong and much bigger than any we've grown before, about 3 ft. tall. Now, 8 months from planting those seeds, we are starting to get a huge amount of eggplants. They are mostly Asian long eggplants, and we also have some Italian-style called Rosa Bianca and some small round ones called Chu.


We started the season off with grilled eggplant and pepper sandwiches with tahini garlic sauce. Yum!

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