Growing egg plant

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Egg Plant Culture

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Quick Summary of Growing Egg Plant

Sow seeds in hotbeds early in March. When three inches high, pot the young plants, using small pots, and plunge them in the same bed, so that the plants may become stalky. Plant out in open ground in early June. Set plants two feet apart, with rows three feet apart. Watch for the potato beetle. This pest may be checked by spraying with Bordeaux Mixture.

Egg Plant Detailed Growth

This is one of the few vegetables requiring special care in cultivation. The seed should be started in a warm hotbed in April, and as soon as the plants are three inches high they should be potted off into small pots and plunged back into the soil of the beds. They may be transplanted into the open ground when the weather is quite settled and the soil and nights warm, or they may be repotted into larger pots and set out in the open ground the first of June.

Egg-plants require a great deal of heat at the start, and if they receive a setback at this time, rarely recover, so that every effort should be made to keep them from being chilled, while at the same time giving them the necessary amount of ventilation. It is well in planting the seed of egg-plants to reserve a portion in case the first sowing should fail and a later one need to be made.

After the plants are of a size to be planted out there is little difference in the culture accorded them and that given other vegetables, but they should not be allowed to suffer for water, and a weekly dose of liquid manure after the plants bloom will be of benefit.

When about a foot high, the earth should be drawn up about the stem in cultivating. The plants are often seriously injured by the potato-bug, which eats the stem of the blossom at the point where it curves over, seldom, to any extent, the leaves of the plant. Whenever the bug appears early in the season, the plants should be gone over daily to catch and destroy it, or they may be sprayed with Paris green, which at this stage will do no harm. The destruction of these first blossoms will make two or three weeks' difference in the maturing of the first crop and must be met energetically. These first bugs which appear lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves, and these must be looked for and destroyed and little subsequent trouble will be experienced.

Curiously enough, for a plant which starts out in life so peculiarly sensitive to cold, the egg-plant is not hurt by light fall frost, and I have gathered and marketed very fair eggs long after the frost had destroyed tomatoes and other garden stuff.

The first eggs are always the largest, the fruit growing smaller as the season advances; especially is this true when water and liquid manure is withheld.

The best variety to raise is the Early Black Beauty or the Improved New York.