please see my list! Thanks, Paul.

I am so glad this post was here for me to read and learn about eggplant. My first year growing it and I have CLASSIC plants I bought at the nursery and been out in the garden. But after reading this I wished I had some of these mentioned here. Well, today I go to our local in town nursery and what do they have but Ichiban and Gretal. Gretal is white. I bought a plant of each! So excited as I have never eatten anything but the common grocery store bought purple eggplant. First year growing eggplant for me.

Of course they can be over wintered. I live up in New England so can not give specific advice on the best way. But up here I have to over winter using containers. You might be able to over winter by using cardboard boxes over the plants on cold nights. If it stays cold you will need more than that however. Another trick is double coverages. use boxes then put plastic greenhouse over that. simple sheeting over some bent pvc will do the job. I would try to grow at least one in an 18 gallon nice tote. that can be brought into the house on bad cold nights or for a week or more. drill a few holes in the bottom. I do 5 holes. lets the water drain out. eggplant can grow well in wet soil better than lots of other things. in fact some people use egg plant roots for graft material. you can also cut back the plant. allow the leaves to fall off if they do. when it warms up good the plant will put out new leaves and grow. hope it lives. I never did it up here in new england. But you should only need a few days or nights support to keep it alive over the winter so it seems straight forward to accomplish. I would try to keep it under plastic sheeting in the rainly fall to keep disease off the plant. keep it dry. a simple covering will do the job. just keep the leaves and stems etc dry if possible. Another trick is to make rooted cuttings to make more young healthy plants in the summer when warm to give smaller plants to carry over the winter. have fun doing research.

Heh. Here it is a week later and I now have a load of fingerling eggplants on my plants. It has been several weeks since I'd seen any. Now, I think (hope!!) we've seen the last of the 100+ days, and we're now working highs of 95F or so. So I think that's all it took. Fruiting just turns off like a light switch when the high temps are over 100F. Looking ahead, I see it reported that in Solanaceae (peppers and eggplant) pollen production and fruit set is curtailed when nighttime temps are below 55F. I also now read that with regard to shaking flowers to encourage fruit set, that's essentially what bees do in eggplant. They don't move the pollen from pistil to stamen, but their activity just vibrates the flower and shakes the pollen off. So yes, although eggplants self-pollinate, bees can help.