Fairy Tale Eggplant (5/3/20)

[akivalocal]

I'm moving my discussion of my Fairy Tale Eggplant over to this dedicated thread. dianne, would still love your expertise and input! And of course ERR0R1755, Sher, Shawn, and everyone else who gave tips when I was posting in Dianne's thread!

I've thinned the plants down to one per pod, and they seem incredibly happy! Check it out:





And here's a close up of my biggest plant, the one in the center:




Now to get some height on these friends! I am planning on doing a rinse next week, once they've been in there for 4 weeks. It'll be my first time! Any tips? What do I do with the old water?


Thanks all!

[ERR0R1755]

Doing a rinse and refill isn't hard at all - with my old water, I like to use it to water houseplants or other plants outside. It might not have the nutrients that your eggplants need by now, but other plants will use it!

There's this one "weed" in my yard that I keep watering with my leftover nutrients to see what happens. So far, it's almost as tall as I am.

[akivalocal]

Haha, ERR0R1755! Yeah, before I started to garden, my backyard was JUST 5 foot tall weeds. I know how you feel! 


So it's OK to pour this into the soil? I live by the Mississippi and am always very concerned about what I put in the ground. It's not safe to put down the drain though, is it?

[dianne]

Oh, those look VERY familiar with their HUGE true leaves. 
Very healthy! 

And ERR0R1755 I never thought of saving the drained water to use on other plants. *slaps head*
I have a Rinse & Refill coming in a few days for one of my gardens, and now I know exactly where that reclaimed water is going!

[akivalocal]

Good to hear that they look healthy, dianne! Whew!

[ERR0R1755]

May 24, 2020 19:44:43 GMT -5 akivalocal said:

So it's OK to pour this into the soil? I live by the Mississippi and am always very concerned about what I put in the ground. It's not safe to put down the drain though, is it?

I'm not sure how safe it is for sewers, but it should definitely be safe for soil. If you want to err on the side of caution though, you could always save it and use it to water indoor plants.

(it's basically the fertilizer you'd normally use for traditional gardening, except in a slightly different form to make it more water soluble)

[Sher]

They look BEAUTIFUL, Akiva!

May 24, 2020 20:47:29 GMT -5 ERR0R1755 said:

May 24, 2020 19:44:43 GMT -5 akivalocal said:

So it's OK to pour this into the soil? I live by the Mississippi and am always very concerned about what I put in the ground. It's not safe to put down the drain though, is it?

I'm not sure how safe it is for sewers, but it should definitely be safe for soil. If you want to err on the side of caution though, you could always save it and use it to water indoor plants.

(it's basically the fertilizer you'd normally use for traditional gardening, except in a slightly different form to make it more water soluble)

I figure if something is safe to eat, it is safe to pour down my drain! Why would nutrient water be unsafe for sewers?Is it the fear that weeds will grow in the sewers? I don;t understand.

[ERR0R1755]

May 25, 2020 11:41:19 GMT -5 @cornne said:

I figure if something is safe to eat, it is safe to pour down my drain! Why would nutrient water be unsafe for sewers?Is it the fear that weeds will grow in the sewers? I don;t understand.

I'm not familiar with city water / sewers, but I think there's some type of process where they clean the water out and then add chlorine to it to kill the bacteria? I'm just not sure if the filtration system can filter out the same minerals that are present in the AG nutrients.

It should go without saying that straight up drinking a nutrient solution is a bad idea, since plants transform the minerals they use into something better suited for us to process

[Shawn]

I always pour it down the kitchen sink.


I can think of so many other things that have gone down my drain.  Not to mention all the drain cleaners on the market.  These we use and they have chemicals in them.     


I would hope that the water filtration and cleaning process would cover just about everything but I have no clue how that works,

[akivalocal]

Hi @cornne, ERR0R1755, and Shawn!

It's not that I'm worried it would be "unsafe" for the sewer or for my drinking water, but that it would harm the river. In Minneapolis, our water comes directly from the Mississippi River, and our whole sewer/drainage system is bound up in it as well. There's a lot of campaigning by the city to reduce the use of things like chemical ice melts and very strong fertilizers and/or lawn treatments that run off into the river and can harm its delicate ecosystem. Since I live only a few blocks away from the river, what I put in my lawn and down my drain matters a lot more than for most. Hence, I tend to over-think all those little decisions, and it's also why I'm going for native plants that won't need a lot of special treatment in my backyard garden. My front yard features a thicket of wild, native plants instead of a lawn for that reason, too!

I'll do a little research on this, and figure out exactly what I'm going to do. The U of M extension has a lot of information on river protection online, so I'll probably go there next. 

[akivalocal]

So, what does everyone think? Time for a trim?



I also spotted this today. Cause for concern, or nothing to fret about?

I have never trimmed my eggplant  leaves until they got so tall they blocked light from the ones way down below. I think yours are too young to be trimmed back.. If your see other leaves starting to discolor, do a dump and refill with fresh water and add half the amount of nutrients. That's what I would do.

www.aerogarden.com/blog/fairy-tale-eggplant-care-and-harvest/

[Sher]

I also would wait until the large leaves start blocking light to those underneath it. 

It wouldn't hurt to examine that leaf for bugs, just in case.

[akivalocal]

No bugs! I have an R & R with fresh nutrients scheduled for 2 days from now, so unless I see things get worse tomorrow I'll keep that appointment. I'll update soon!

[akivalocal]

Well, the Fairy Tale Eggplant have gotten quite large! The right two are huge, and the one on the left is a runt in comparison. Maybe I should transplant it into a pot? What do y'all think?




It's getting a bit shady under the leaves. dianne, should I trim some leaves, or not just yet? These are just enormous! It's lovely...and a bit terrifying, too! 

[Sher]

akivalocal , I would put it in a pot. But down here, I wouldn't dare put the pot outdoors because flea beetles would ravage the leaves.

But I don't know if you have flea beetles up there or not.

If you do want to plant it outdoors, read up on controlling flea beetles.  Here's what the damage looks like.

Edit: I learned about flea beetles the hard way. I resorted to using Sevin one year it was so bad.

[akivalocal]

Eeek! Oh my goodness, Sher! I have no idea if we have flea beetles around here, but I'm not willing to risk it after seeing that photo! I'll put it in a pot and have it sit by the Aerogardens; there are four of them in a row, so there's plenty of light. I'll have to read up about planting things in pots inside; never done that before!

aside: Bugs do travel, of course. Once I bought some beautiful lilies similar to the ones in sher's avatar and they brought along with them a beetle infestation to my yard that was so invasive to the state that they had to ban the import of those plants. (I am not saying sher's lilies have beetles at all).

But there are some bugs that are known to make their home in certain states and if you see a bug and have no idea what it is,here is a great search engine for each state! FWIW

www.insectidentification.org/insects-by-state-listing.asp

[dianne]

Jun 3, 2020 16:46:04 GMT -5 akivalocal said:

Well, the Fairy Tale Eggplant have gotten quite large! The right two are huge, and the one on the left is a runt in comparison. Maybe I should transplant it into a pot? What do y'all think?




It's getting a bit shady under the leaves. dianne , should I trim some leaves, or not just yet? These are just enormous! It's lovely...and a bit terrifying, too! 

I trimmed the really big leaves whenever they were blocking another plant, and it never seemed to harm them. They are really hardy plants! As for the little guy, I don't know how he'll make out in a pot, but he probably won't do well staying where he is, so you have nothing to lose, in my opinion.

When my fairy tales got this big or a little bigger, they pretty much stunted everything else growing in the garden. They didn't need the space or light, but they didn't like the competition anyway.