Growing Eggplants Near St. Petersburg

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Read the previous part. ← Eggplants grow in the Leningrad region

Planting eggplants in the greenhouse

If you do not have additional heating of the greenhouse or biofuel is not laid at the planting site, then there is no need to rush to planting seedlings. Let the soil warm up well. Then the planted plants will take root faster. After all, eggplant roots are very fond of when they are warm. Can usually be planted after June 5-10.

A place

Usually a few eggplant bushes are enough for a small family. To do this, you do not need to build a special shelter, it is enough to have a place in a common greenhouse. Eggplants coexist well with peppers, tomatoes, watermelons. They need to be planted by their own group, where they create their own microclimate. You do not need to plant them near the entrance or close to the wall, because they do not like changes in temperature. Eggplants are extremely fond of the sun, especially direct, not through the film. Therefore, for them it is necessary to choose the sunniest corner in the greenhouse. It's good if you can open the film during the day so that the sun's rays fall directly on the leaves. As one experienced gardener noted, no shadow should fall on the eggplants, except for the shadow of clouds floating in the sky.

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Hardening

Before planting, the plant must be hardened. First, they are taught to the open air and the sun: when the outside temperature rises above 15 ° C, it is recommended to take the plants outdoors and keep them in the sun, starting at 15 minutes and gradually increasing the time of walking. A week before planting the seedlings in the greenhouse, they are accustomed to cool nights, leaving pots with seedlings in the greenhouse overnight. The hardened seedlings take root in the greenhouse much faster, they get sick less.

The soil

The soil must be prepared in advance, preferably in the fall or at least two weeks before planting the seedlings. Eggplants grow very poorly on acidic soils, so the soil must first be deacidified to a slightly acidic or neutral reaction with chalk, lime or dolomite flour. It is better to do this in the fall, because the deoxidation process is slow. The soil should be loose and fertile, but not over-fertilized so that the plants do not fatten. A bucket of compost and complete mineral fertilizer - 40-50 g of Kemira wagon or nitroammophoska, or a tablespoon of superphosphate, a teaspoon of ammonium nitrate and a glass of ash - must be added to the marginal soil per square meter of area. The thickness of the loose fertile layer should be at least 15 cm.

Disembarkation technique

It is convenient to plant seedlings in the holes, where you first need to pour warm water, and drop a clod of earth with roots directly into this water. Immediately cover all free space with earth, water again. It is not necessary to deepen the plants, because anyway no additional roots are formed on the stem. After planting, eggplants should be shaded from the sun, covering them with newspaper for several days - this greatly helps the plants to endure the stress of transplanting.

Landing scheme

Place the eggplants so that they do not shade each other and are well ventilated. For low bushes, it is enough to leave 40-45 cm between plants, for tall ones - 50-55 cm. It turns out 5 bushes per square meter.

Some biological subtleties

Eggplant is a short day plant. It develops much faster when the day after the white nights decreases and becomes less than 14 hours. This accelerates flowering and the onset of fruiting. Usually, after the first or the first two flowers bloom, no new ones appear within 10-20 days. This is normal and cannot be remedied by any means.

Eggplant care: watering, airing

Eggplants are very fond of moist soil, but excess moisture in it is just as dangerous for plants as its lack. Watering is not necessary often, but abundantly and regularly, and only with warm water, trying not to get on the leaves. It is better to do this in the morning. After watering, it is not necessary to loosen and huddle the soil. Young plants should be watered not only under the crown, but also behind its projection, in order to provoke the growth of roots. With dry soil and overheated air, plants shed flowers, so plantings should not only be watered, but also ventilated as often as possible. Airing will relieve the plants of high air humidity, which they do not tolerate well.

Top dressing

Eggplants are responsive to feeding. The first of them is usually done as soon as the plants take root and grow - about two weeks after planting - with calcium nitrate, 15-20 g per 10 liters of water. This is so that the roots grow better. Subsequently, they are fed every two weeks, alternating mineral and organic feedings. They use nitroammofoska, Kemira, foskamide, ekofoska and other complex fertilizers. From organic, herbal infusions, mullein are used. Since eggplants need microelements for development, you can give them foliar dressing once a month, for example Kemira Lux 10 g per 10 l of water, AVA fertilizer - 1 tbsp. insist a spoon in 3 liters of water at room temperature for a day. Liquid fertilizer Uniflor Rost goes well, Uniflor Bud - according to the instructions for fertilization.

Pollination

Eggplant is a self-pollinating plant. Their pollen is heavy, and in damp weather it hardly spills out of the anthers. Pollination does not occur, the ovaries crumble, so there is often no harvest in damp summers. The situation can be corrected: knock on a well-opened flower (give it a click) so that pollen spills out of it directly on the pad under the index finger in the palm of your hand ("Venus tubercle"). Then pistils of other flowers must be poked into this pollen - pollination is 100%.

Shaping, pinching

Shoots and leaves shading the flowers should be removed for better fruit set. It is constantly necessary to remove yellow, diseased and damaged leaves and shoots. Usually you have to remove the flowers that appear on the plant before planting it in the greenhouse, because they never grow into full-fledged fruits. I leave one largest flower in the inflorescences, remove the rest. It is also necessary to remove all shoots without flowers and buds, elongated and thickening the plant.

In early August, it is imperative to pinch all the shoots in order to stop their growth. Considering that the period from flowering to harvest is 40-50 days, and even longer in the second half of August - September, it is also necessary to remove at the beginning of August all the buds that will not have time to give full fruit by the end of the season. Usually on one bush, depending on the summer weather and on the variety, 5-7 full-fledged fruits grow. If you leave a larger number, then some of them will turn out to be small, underdeveloped.

Eggplant pests and diseases

Eggplant has them in common with tomatoes. Most often, these plants suffer from late blight, apical or dry rot. Of the pests, the Colorado potato beetle is very fond of eggplant, in a dry hot summer a spider mite settles on the leaves, in recent years a whitefly has appeared. Therefore, they need to be looked after all summer.

Harvesting

Eggplants should be removed from the bush when they reach the correct size for the variety and stop growing. The color of the fruit should be bright, with the color characteristic of the variety. If the eggplant has turned even a little brown, then it is overripe. You need to cut off with a stalk, preferably in the morning, so that the cut site has time to dry out by night.

Using

In home cooking, eggplants are used not only fresh, but also dried and frozen. It is better to eat fruits at the stage of technical ripeness, when the seeds are not yet ripe and hard. Most varieties, especially old ones, during biological maturation, when the seeds ripen, accumulate a lot of solanine in the fruits, the fruits become bitter. To remove bitterness, sliced eggplants are soaked for 2-3 hours in a 3% salt solution before cooking.

Getting seeds

From the fruits of the varieties you like, not hybrids, you can get your own seeds. To do this, you need to leave the largest healthy fruit on the bush and not pluck it until it ripens. Biologically ripe fruit begins to acquire a brown or yellowish color, then it must be cut off with a stalk. For ripening, you can put the cut fruit in a warm place for 2-4 weeks. The fruit can then be cut open, the seeds removed, rinsed and dried. Their seeds usually have good germination, which they retain for 3-5 years.