By gisette
Outdoor Eggplant 2011
Submitted on Sat, 2011/05/14 - 5:10pm
Last updated on Mon, 2011/10/31 - 11:47pm
Posted in
Planted out my gretel eggplant today, aged 7 weeks. It shares a growbox with aunt molly's ground cherry, and just seeded a zucchini. Which is maybe more than ought to go in one growbox, but... The zucchini will probably be cut down by end of July. And I've no idea how the ground cherry will do. It's not warm enough yet for an eggplant to set fruit, but it has some growing roots to do first, anyway.
Harvests:
early indoor/outdoor fairy tale: 59, first May 13 (13.5 weeks) - retired 7/21
gretel: 166, first July 3 (7 weeks from transplant)
Sun, 2011/06/05 - 9:18pm
#2
Ate six fairy tale eggplant this week - pretty good. Last time, tried them grilled with olive oil and fresh-ground Tuscan spices - I like! 
The gretel has its first thorny, spiky buds under development. Both have aphids. No sign of my ladybugs... but I have seen quite a few little green lacewings. Go, lacewings, go...
Added Tomatoes Alive! fertilizer to the fairy tale eggplant, early tomato and pepper, and the in-ground peppers. The tomato was starting to look like that mid-season fatigue (some yellowing leaves), so I dosed 'em all at the same time.
Tue, 2011/06/07 - 8:15pm
#3
Hi Gisette,
My baby Ichiban eggplants in the EB on the deck-
http://s463.photobucket.com/albums/qq355/beth11_album/?action=view&curre...
Moonflower plants, too
http://s463.photobucket.com/albums/qq355/beth11_album/?action=view&curre...
Tue, 2011/06/07 - 8:30pm
#4
Nice, Beth! I was wondering what the moonflowers were! (While I was on Photobucket for the first one, I scrolled around.) Any ichiban flowers yet? Or still honing those deluxe buds?
Tue, 2011/06/07 - 9:07pm
#5
No buds on the eggplant yet, planted very late. Moonflowers are really scrawny - I planted them late, too. The other eb has just MF seeds started. I need spring to be expanded to get everything done before hot weather! If you were on photobucket, you saw the cuc baby - why can't I get a digital camera to focus on the darn cuc instead of the leaves behind? Is there a trick I'm missing? Phooey.
Take Care,
Beth
Tue, 2011/06/07 - 9:35pm
#6
I could use spring being expanded, period. I hate it when we get a late spring in CT, because summer is never delayed by even a minute. 
We just get gypped out of spring. Our beautiful week of September weather ended today. Full summer again now, 80's and humid.
On my camera (Nikon Coolpix), there's a half-press on the shutter button you use to focus (on item in green brackets), then hold it in until you've moved the camera to frame the overall picture, then press the shutter button the rest of the way to snap the photo. Every digital camera I've had, has some version of this. Can practice at the table with two glasses and a distant wall, trying to get a picture centered between the glasses (center contains wall), with the glasses instead of the wall in focus.
But if you're too close to the baby cuke, you may need the camera's macro setting to focus on the baby cuke at all.
Edit: I didn't see a baby cuke closeup on Photobucket, just the whole cuke eb picture.
Tue, 2011/06/07 - 10:13pm
#7
I'll try again. I half press and it will focus on everything else but what I want it to focus on! I've set it on general picture taking and close ups (and not just this camera either!) I move the darn thing around, back up, move closer and still get a picture of the leaf behind the thing I want (I guess I didn't load the cuc pix to photobucket). Again, I guess I just need practice.....
Sun, 2011/06/12 - 3:13pm
#8
Need to harvest fairy tale eggs this evening. Gretel eggplant has its first bloom.
At long, long last, a zucchini finally sprouted (took 4 seeds and about a month...) at the back of the ground cherry/gretel growbox. It'll probably need to be removed, but letting it grow for now.
For whatever reason, green aphids seem to be flocking to fairy tale eggplant flowers, and not on the carmen pepper next door, or the eggplant leaves. This doesn't seem to be doing the eggplant much harm.
Sun, 2011/06/19 - 9:20pm
#9
Getting rather tired of fairy tale eggplant... This picture was after picking 11 to give to Dad for Father's Day. I'm not really sure if the count is right - 33 so far, or 43 so far. And it's still loaded... and none of that th eounting the Aerogarden fairy tale eggplant. Still warking forward to my first gretel eggplant, tho. It set first fruit, though we've had nights well below 60 (one below 50) this past week.
Deleted the zucchini. That growbox is quite full.
Sun, 2011/06/26 - 3:40pm
#10
Fairy tale eggplant not looking entirely well. But its fruit look fine, and it's loaded, and I don't much care. Gretel eggplant coming along nicely now, though it's very crowded by the ground cherry.
The early eggplant moved outdoors full time as of Tuesday (now Sunday), so I'm going to retire the early indoor/outdoor topic, and merge those plants in with their summer crops.
Harvested another 3 fairy tale eggs, and there are lots more developing, flowering heavily. No buds on the gretel yet, but it looks very happy.