Fairy Tale Eggplant 9/24/21 to 12/23/22 (461 Days)

[mike]

I agree, nice pic. The bloom is beautiful.

[lynnee]

I think that this is a baby eggplant. Maybe, maybe not, but the bloom fell off and the remainder of the bloom is still firmly attached to the stem.

[Sher]

I think it is  too!!!

[Shawn]

It's an eggplant 🍆

[lynnee]

Yesss! It is an eggplant, though it may not last much longer if I keep touching it to take photos!  It is starting to elongate a little.  Here is a closeup photo and an extreme closeup photo from today (Day 64).



Finally I am seeing pollen, but it shows as fine powder on leaves beneath blooms, rather than as clouds of pollen released by the touch of the pollinator.

[Sher]

It's a beautiful baby!!! 

[campingcorgis]

Very cool!  Thanks for sharing this with us, lynnee!

[lynnee]

There are at least two eggplants developing in my Farm 12 XL garden. The one on the left is the baby I've been posting about.



The outdoor eggplant still seems healthy, and it's growing, but there are no flowers. No doubt it's too cold for it, with daytime temps remaining below 70 degrees F.



 

[campingcorgis]

Very cool photos.  The eggplants are so cute...and I love your painted outdoor pots!  Nice!

[lynnee]

The Fairy Tale eggplants are awfully fiddly to grow. As Sher warned, the blossoms need to be pollinated by hand. This is kind of difficult, because the blossoms appear underneath the leaves, and turn their centers downward.

There are clusters of flowers underneath the leaves in the two plants shown below that you can't see unless you get down on your hands and knees and hunt for them.  The solo plant in the Farm 12 Plus is the same way.  I think that I'll use a countertop AG Bounty Elite if I grow them again.



At Day 67, all three of the indoor AG plants have some eggplants developing now. It's time to be checking out recipes, though the fruit  will probably not be ready for another couple of weeks.

[campingcorgis]

Very cool and your assessment makes sense too.  

[lynnee]

Another thing about Fairy Tale eggplants: they have thorns that show up along the central rib of some leaves. They're kind of scattered, and hard to see, but kind of nasty. Not as bad as rose thorns, but I had to pull one out of my thumb the other day. 😎

The pic on the lower right is zoom 10.0 .



The outdoor eggplant is starting to develop blooms! Amazing, given the cold nights.

[campingcorgis]

Ouch!

Do you have a mirror you might use, to help with the search?  

[lynnee]

Nov 23, 2021 20:38:20 GMT -5 campingcorgis said:

Ouch!

Do you have a mirror you might use, to help with the search?  

The thorns are actually rather easy to avoid. You just don't grab the leaves along the center rib.

[Shawn]

Oh no, now that you mention he thorns .. I too remember thorns on one of my projects.  I just can not remember what I was growing LOL

[lynnee]

I just realized that you were suggesting using a mirror to help with the pollination, Shawn . That's a nice idea, but the eggplant likes to hide the blooms under the big leaves. (The eggplants love the extra space that's available in the Farms, but it's easier on the grower if the garden is on a table of some kind.)

The exercise is good for my knees, actually. They've stopped cracking, and I just saw something from Web MD that said you should NOT rest your stiff knees.  

[Shawn]

I believe it was campingcorgis with the mirror idea.  I would like to give credit to the proper person

[lynnee]

Day 71. Eggplant ready to harvest soon! AG says 3-4 inches.

The one on the right is the one that I've been posting about all along. The plants have more than these two in development.

[campingcorgis]

Oh my gosh!  That was quick!  Are you feeding them super food?  

[Sher]

They exploded after they were pollinated!

It is safe to let them get bigger than 3-4 inches as long as the skin is still glossy. As they age, the skin becomes duller and they lose their firmness and get seedier.