Fairy Tale Eggplant 9/24/21 to 12/23/22 (461 Days)

I think that this is a baby eggplant. Maybe, maybe not, but the bloom fell off and the remainder of the bloom is still firmly attached to the stem.

It's an eggplant 🍆

It's a beautiful baby!!! 

There are at least two eggplants developing in my Farm 12 XL garden. The one on the left is the baby I've been posting about.



The outdoor eggplant still seems healthy, and it's growing, but there are no flowers. No doubt it's too cold for it, with daytime temps remaining below 70 degrees F.



 

The Fairy Tale eggplants are awfully fiddly to grow. As Sher warned, the blossoms need to be pollinated by hand. This is kind of difficult, because the blossoms appear underneath the leaves, and turn their centers downward.

There are clusters of flowers underneath the leaves in the two plants shown below that you can't see unless you get down on your hands and knees and hunt for them.  The solo plant in the Farm 12 Plus is the same way.  I think that I'll use a countertop AG Bounty Elite if I grow them again.



At Day 67, all three of the indoor AG plants have some eggplants developing now. It's time to be checking out recipes, though the fruit  will probably not be ready for another couple of weeks.

Another thing about Fairy Tale eggplants: they have thorns that show up along the central rib of some leaves. They're kind of scattered, and hard to see, but kind of nasty. Not as bad as rose thorns, but I had to pull one out of my thumb the other day. 😎

The pic on the lower right is zoom 10.0 .



The outdoor eggplant is starting to develop blooms! Amazing, given the cold nights.

The thorns are actually rather easy to avoid. You just don't grab the leaves along the center rib.

I just realized that you were suggesting using a mirror to help with the pollination, Shawn . That's a nice idea, but the eggplant likes to hide the blooms under the big leaves. (The eggplants love the extra space that's available in the Farms, but it's easier on the grower if the garden is on a table of some kind.)

The exercise is good for my knees, actually. They've stopped cracking, and I just saw something from Web MD that said you should NOT rest your stiff knees.  

Day 71. Eggplant ready to harvest soon! AG says 3-4 inches.

The one on the right is the one that I've been posting about all along. The plants have more than these two in development.