How to stake eggplant

15 years ago

Hi,

I have never grown eggplants before. How do you support the plant? One stake and tie the main central stem to this? Or would it need a trellis? I never want to go the route of not supporting a vegetable plant....when I grew tomatoes for the first time 2 years ago...what a maddening experience that was!

Thank you for our help.

Katyajini

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Comments (4)

potterhead2
15 years ago
Hi Katyajini,

My experience is that Eggplant looks more like pepper than tomato, although all are in the same family. Eggplant have a more upright growth than tomato, and have larger leaves than pepper. Branches will come off the main stem and the friut will form at the ends of branches and on top. The plant size can vary significantly. My Fairy Tale" plants stay pretty small, but "Green Goddess" and "Rosa Biance" are huge (need to plant 2' apart).

You can tie the main stem to a stake so it doesn't fall over, however, you will want to support the branches which have the fruit weighing them down. If you only support the main stalk, these fruit laden branches may break off (which has happened to me). I prefer to put a tomato cage over them. The kind with circular rings are easy to find and pretty cheap. I prefer them since I have trouble keeping up with all the tying. The cages I have are not as big as the ones I use for tomato plants, I think they are about 3' tall before you push them down into the soil.

Eggplant are pretty easy to grow, just don't crowd them, you'll get less production. The only pest problem I've had is with flea beetle. The plants will generally withstand quite a bit of flea beetle holes, but I try to keep the population down. Since I prefer not to use chemicals I just squash the little buggers. I put on a thin rubber glove and squash the flea beetles onto the leaf with thumb above and forefinger below the leaf.

Happy Gardening!
Potterhead
gardener_sandy
15 years ago
Eggplants and peppers do well in the commercial tomato cages, the tapered ones that are too weak and flimsy for tomatoes. They really don't need much support, just a bit to keep them from blowing over in summer thunderstorms when loaded with veggies.

Sandy
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grandpop1
15 years ago
I use cages made from 6"x6" opening, concrete reinforcing wire for peppers, eggplant and tomatoes - works great for all.
katyajini
Original Author
15 years ago
Thank you folks. Its good to know that eggplants don't get unwieldy.

Sandy, Thanks for such a detailed note. It will be very helpful. Our lives are so parallel. I too am a biochemist. We bought a huge ramshackle house with a large rocky, sloped yard. We have spent the last six years renovating the house bit by bit and bringing the yard under control. The yard was made into junk yard full of weeds and garbage. It is so much better now but I haven't on the battle yet. I too have two little children. I just want to garden and take care of my family. But that's not going to happen. But life is good. At least I have my loving family and am able to garden happily some of the time.

Do you have any recommendations for how far I should plant Hansel, Gretel and Ichiban?

grandpop1, the 6 x 6 concrete wire sounds like a perfect idea. The openings sound the right dimension for leaves and hands. And its quite heavy and substantial too. But how do you deal with the rust? Or do you just let it be?

How to stake eggplant

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potterhead2

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How to stake eggplant

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potterhead2

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