They will now be trained horizontally at head height meaning I will have to duck under them when I enter the greenhouse (yeah ok....that's about knee height to big thick Yorkshiremen then!). I am only growing the central stem and any side shoots are cut back to the first leaf axil. All baby fruits have been picked off up to now, but once the plant has 'turned the corner' I will start to allow fruits to form so that they hang downwards. If you look carefully at the photo above you will see the strings going off from the top of the plants for them to be secured to. This way the skins won't get scratched by the coarse foliage and good strong plants mean that there is a big engine for the fruits to form quickly, vitally important on the showbench as you want good size with freshness.
Cu's can be picked up to a week before your show and stored in clingfilm in the refrigerator. Careful the setting isn't too low as they will freeze and then you'll feel like a right dick. Try and keep the flower attached to the end of the cu, but if you do happen to dislodge it secure it back onto the fruit with a very tiny dollop of superglue. Do it carefully and no-one will ever be able to tell, since most judges are geriatric old sods with shite eyesight. Whilst this is technically cheating every fucker does it and don't let anyone tell you they don't. Besides, it's nigh on impossible to make a car journey without them being shaken off.
By picking the fruits over a week or so you can ensure they are all bang on the money for length, but do bear in mind they will grow very quickly, especially in a dampened greenhouse, so you need to keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't go over the length of the ones you've got in store. I've even heard stories of some growers setting their alarm clocks for the middle of the night when they'd calculated a time they would reach the required length!
I've been pleasantly surprised by my aubergines once again and I am looking forward to entering a few plates in the any other veg classes, not to mention using the rejects in some delicious mousakkas. However, a couple of plants have thrown down their leaves almost overnight, having looked very healthy beforehand. It's not red spider as i've sprayed with Dynamec and there isn't a tell-tale web in sight, and it can't be overwatering as plants next to them are perfectly fine. It is a mystery, but the same thing happened last season and after picking off all the droopy leaves to leave a pathetic looking plant, they did seem to recover and go on to produce a crop.
4 comments:
Hi Simon I am growing some Aubergines for the first time this year and they look nice and healthy, but when they started to form flower buds the buds just drop of any ideas I have been giving them regular tomato feed, season seems to be going on now and wonder if they will ever fruit.
Simon I think your trouble is down to a syndrome called "balanoposthitis" caused by excessive moisture and a lack of air movement.
There are several similar photos of your problem if you Google Image the condition.
Quite an obscure condition to have knowledge on Dan......unless of course you suffer from it yourself?
Anonymous...found this on internet which may help.
When an eggplant has flowers but no fruit, this is due to one of two issues. The first thing that can cause eggplant flowers to fall off is a lack of water and the other is a lack of pollination.
What to do for eggplant blossoms drying out because of lack of water
When an eggplant plant is stressed, its blossoms will dry up and drop off without producing fruit. The most common reason a eggplant gets stressed is due to a lack of water. Your eggplant needs at least 2″ of water a week, more in very hot weather. The majority of that water should be gotten in one watering so that the water goes deeper into the ground and is less likely to evaporate quickly. Deep watering also encourages the eggplant to grow deep roots, which helps it to find water deeper in the ground and even out its water needs so it will be less likely to drop a single eggplant flower..
What to do for eggplant blossoms drying out due to a lack of pollination
An eggplant flower is normally wind pollinated, meaning it does not rely on insects like bees and moths to pollinate it. A pollination problem can occur when the weather conditions are very wet or very humid or are very hot. When the air is very humid, this causes the pollen eggplant flower to become very sticky and it cannot fall down onto the pistil to pollinate the flower. When the weather is very hot, the pollen becomes inactive because the plant thinks that it cannot support the stress of an additional fruit along with the hot weather. In a sense, the plant aborts the blossom so as not to stress itself further.
Eggplant flower hand pollination
If you suspect your eggplant flowers fall off due to a lack off pollination, then you can use hand pollination. Eggplant flower hand pollination is easy to do. All you need to do is take a small, clean paintbrush and move this around the inside of the eggplant flower.
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