eggplant flowers

[Todd]

Hi All,

This is my first year at "trying" to grow eggplant. I have never seen an eggplant flower before. Is it just me, or is that flower the most beautiful purple dicot flower on the face of this earth?

Just out of curiously, how soon will it take to turn into food. I figure a have a bit to come up with a suitable story to tell the plant what I am about to do with their offspring. I think I will use the "ride in the country" story I used on my zukes last year. They seem to have bought it. Plants is "so" stupid.

-T

[David Hare-Scott]

There are many beautiful flowers of plants that are grown primarily for other purposes.

It depends on the cultivar and conditions but they are generally not fast to grow and mature - say 2 to 4 months.

D

[Pat Kiewicz]

I've had people visit my veggie garden stop in shocked admiration at how lovely a healthy, blooming eggplant is. I've seen eggplant used in a rather whimsical ornamental/edible garden along with colorful amaranth, kale and Swiss chard. Some varieties of eggplant have a purple wash to the leaves, and there are varieties with a bright violet color rather than the classic deep, deep purple purple fruit.

That's entirely up to the weather and your choices. I need to grow my own eggplant so I can pick it young, before any seeds form. So it can be only a matter of days or a week or so before a faded flower yeilds something I can use. If you are growing a large-fruited variety and can tolerate a bit of seediness, maybe a month or so before you get the eggplant of your dreams.

Cool weather slows them down. They really like it warm.

[Todd]

I was surprised when I first saw them. Classic 5 pedal dicot and iridescent purple/violet. They rival my classic dicot 5 pedal hollyhocks.

On my food plants, I am use to little, unsightly flowers, like those on my tomatoes. Also, use to the flowers on my Zukes, which a downright prehistoric looking!

Thank you!

-T

[Todd]

Buzz kill.

How often do you see pretty flowers on food plants?

Thank you.

Hopefully, more like two months. When the nursery guy asked me which ones I wanted, I told him the ones that produced the soonest. I forget what he called them.

-T

[Brooklyn1]

Eggplant being in the nightshade family does most of it's growing at night... needs hot sunny weather during daytime when it stores energy, then at night it uses that energy to grow. There are many types of eggplant, I mostly grow the Chinese and Japanese eggplant, they have thinner skin and far fewer seeds, I also like their configuration (long/thin) for grilling.

Occasionally I'm treated with a 'girly' eggplant:

[Todd]

Hi Brooklyn1,

I have been told by someone that tomatoes only ripen at night when it is nice and hot. Is this the case? It has been 95 F in the day and 65 F at night.

Many thanks,

-T

[David Hare-Scott]

I take this to mean I am some kind of party-pooper. I don't know why you would say that, beauty is all around. How is my observation of that destructive of your observation of one case?

Often. Try passion fruit, quince (not the so-called flowering quince the fruiting one), feijoa (pineapple guava), apple, pear, globe artichoke, many stone fruits, many cucurbits. The first three are as attractive as the eggplant in my (subjective) opinion. Google some images and don't be so insular.

D.

[David Hare-Scott]

I suggest both of these ideas are somewhat faulty.

Plants do have two major cycles to their growth, one that makes sugars via photosythesis the other that turns sugars into new tissue. The first only happens under light the second any time the sugars are available. So tissue construction does happen at night but there is no reason to think that those of the nightshade family grow mainly at night. Sheldon may have some fact to contradict me or may just reply with abuse as usual.

On the tomatoes they do like it warm but not too warm. If the temperature gets too high it interferes with correct flowering and fertilisation and so with fruit production. I think this idea of ripening at night may be a distorted view of that, because it isn't so hot at night they do better then, or something like that. As said before tomatoes will be doing tissue building and other metabolic processes at night but I don't think that translates to ripening only or even mainly at night.

In any case it makes no difference as night and day will happen regardless.

D

[Drew Lawson]