WE LOVE EGGPLANT! I am so glad I found this thread. Great recipe idea's. I have grown Black Beauty and Ichiban. This year I am growing Iciban and something similar in white (not sure of the name....sorry)......I like to make eggplant parmesan with the big fruits and we grill Ichiban with salt and olive oil until soft. Then sprinkle with parmesan cheese.YUMMMY!!! That is our favorite use. I also use the recipe from "Fannie Farmer" called Eggplant caviar. Also very tasty. I have used eggplant in ratatouille also...prefer grilled. This year my eggplant have not been so productive but are covered with ants. If I lift a leaf, there are many insects and ants...lots of ants. I am not certain of the other insects because they are so small but I assume they are aphids but they are underneath the leaf. Not sure if I zhould worry....suggestions will be appreciated. I sprayed Safer but they are still there a couple days later.

Heat mats are for germination only. Never keep germinated seedlings on heat mats. It can kill the roots quickly. Same goes for domes. They are never to be left on once germination occurs - better to not even use them in the first place. Nothing causes damp-off to develop faster than domes left in place after germination. For plants, air circulation is vital, humidity in the air is not. And just because the surface of the soil looks dry doesn't mean it is actually dry. The surface moisture content isn't relevant. It is the moisture at the root level that counts. Numerous discussions here about all this that the search will pull up if you want multiple opinions. Dave

Sure wish i'd kept my geenhouse going after reading your posts. I'm getting the itch to sow seeds. I've got my tomato seeds from William and i've seen some container peppers,cukes,and cantelope seeds,i'm thinking about trying. Have to think about it tho. I found an old planting guide from Organic Gardening. I can't get the headings to come out right on the forum website,just on my computer. :^( So-o-o the first column is "Crop", the second is "weeks from sowing to transplanting", the third is "planting out date (relative to last frost date)" ....Basil.......6 wks.........1 wk after......... ....Broccoli....4-6 wks.......2wks before........ ....Brussel sprouts 5-7 wks....4 wks before...... ....Cabbage.....4-6 wks.......4 wks before....... ....Cauliflower...4-6 wks......2 wks before...... ....Cucumber.....3-4 wks.......1-2 wks after..... ....Eggplant.....8-10 wks......2-3 wks after..... ....Kale.........4-6 wks.......4 wks before...... ....Lettuce......4-5 wks.......3-4 wks before.... ....Melons.......3-4 wks.......2 wks after....... ....Parsley......9-10 wks......2-3 wks before.... ....Peppers......6-10 wks......2 wks after....... ....Spinach......4-6 wks.......3-6 wks before.... ....Squash.......3-4 wks.......2 wks after....... ....Swiss Chard...4-6 wks......2 wks before...... ....Tomatoes......6-8 wks......1-2 wks after.....

Bon, I cannot think of any reason to not grow eggplant and summer squash together. Winter squash? Hmm. Most winter squash are vining and run rampantly so might be likely to swallow up the eggplant. If the winter squash you're growing is more bushy and refined in nature it might work. Otherwise, to make it work you need to keep an eye on the squash plant, and train any vines/runners away from the eggplant. Make sure your eggplant is a good distance away from the squash when planted too. Amy, I do a gazillion types of trap cropping, so to talk about it all would require writing a book and that's never going to happen. What I do varies from one type of plant to another and even from week to week, month to month, and season to season, so if there's some specific crop you want to know about, ask and I'll try to answer. With regards to the cucumber beetles, they are everywhere here where we are surrounded by many thousands of acres of pasture land that is largely untended, other than maybe being sprayed by a broadleaf weedkiller at some point each spring and then being grazed, cut and baled later on. The beetles often emerge from overwintering in late January or earliest February and are out flying around before I even have any new plants in the ground. Because they are so early, there's a well-established population of them milling around before I plant anything at all, and by the time I'm planting, the population is overwhelmingly huge. So, to catch and kill those little buggers, I start sacrificial cucumber seeds early and set the young plants out on the patio table or in the garden or both when the plants have 4 to 5 leaves. I have them in disposable containers, usually paper or plastic cups. Cucumber beetles flock to them. I then kill the beetles on the plants, or if the plants have dozens of beetles on them, I bag up the infested plants in zip-lock bags, zip them shut, and put them in a black trash bag to be hauled away with the household trash. Then I move another cucumber plant or two from the light shelf or greenhouse to the outdoors to be the new trap plant. If you start a whole flat of cucumber plants early (and choose a variety not touted for pest tolerance) you can trap and kill oodles and oodles of cucumber beetles before you ever put any kind of cucurbit in the ground. Every cucumber beetle you kill is one less beetle that will be reproducing and causing issues later on. Cucumber beetles do not feed only on cucumber plants because they can attack virtually any and all plants in the garden, so by killing the earliest generations, I hopefully am keeping the overall population down. And, for anyone wondering, one of the major issues with cucumber beetles is that they carry and spread disease, so the fewer of them you have around, the better. Usually by the time I'm planting cucumbers, squash and melons in the ground, our cucumber beetle population is fairly small. It eventually will grow as the general popuation is highly mobile and flies around searching for their preferred plants, but usually by then at least my main pickling cucumber (County Fair, chosen expressly for superb disease tolerance) is well-established and the cuke beetles don't damage them much. On a warm, spring day, I see cucumber beetles everywhere on everything, so trapping them early and killing them can only help. Trap plants work great when they are the only available cucurbits. Once you have cucurbits in the ground, the trap plants in containers aren't all that helpful since the cucumber beetles have many more options at that poing. You can use Blue Hubbard squash as a trap plant for squash bugs and SVBs in the same way. Grow them a short distance from your actual preferred squash plants, and plant the Blue Hubbard earlier so it can start trapping pests. Then, try to catch and kill all the squash bugs and SVBs that flock to it. This works really well if you have your main squash crop under floating row cover so that the Blue Hubbard isn't just the best option for the pests---it is the only option at that point. Dawn