My eggplant are slow also, but I started out with really tiny plants--they were the runts left over from our plant sale LOL

3 of my 6 eggplants have open flowers. The other three plants have flower buds. So the eggplants are coming along at last. For the longest time they did not like the cold weather but now summer is here.

First picking of eggplant this season. These are ones I bought plants of this spring labeled GOURMET LONG ORIENTAL . Have not eaten them yet so can not report on taste.

Looks good Rita!
My Brazilian Orange have small marble size fruit, but none of the others have even thrown a flower.

My Black Beauty eggplants are almost shaded out by the Purple Hull Peas planted with them. But, they have their first blooms!

I think the break from the burning sun encouraged them to bloom.

That sounds great. Personally I have never had that much luck growing Black Beauty. Very low production for me. One named Classic did much better but the best of those large dark purple Italian types is Parks Whopper Eggplants. Really great, put out lots of eggplants and start early.

I didn't find them at the one nursery I always get them at this spring so not growing them this year.

One more recipe with eggplants
Armenian Lentil Soup with Eggplant and Apricots
Google and you'll get a bunch of sites. If I had a small eggplant handy, I would probably add it to generic vegetable soup.

A pizza place here has a great pizza with little cubes of eggplant, and halved cherry tomatoes, looking roasted on top of a pizza, great stuff. Probably garlic and no usual tomato sauce.

The eggplants are growing well. Yesterday I picked four nice fruits but forgot to take a picture.

Just a few flowers here.
The Brazilian Orange are still marble size.

CarolineScott said:Just a few flowers here.
The Brazilian Orange are still marble size.

You sure do end up waiting a long time.

Next year I hope to do better with my eggplants as I intend to start some of my own from seeds.

These were all started from seeds, but have not had the TLC that they require!

We had a cool spring so the eggplants struggled until the weather got warmer. I didn't much fuss with them as really I just had to wait for warm weather to arrive. Nothing else would help.

Picked these today.



It is a very good year for eggplants. They started out struggling but now just pump out the fruit. If I had known they would do this well I would have planted more plants.

Beautiful, Rita--do you know what variety that is?

LOL - my biggest eggplant is about an inch long at present...

mom2goldens said:Beautiful, Rita--do you know what variety that is?

No. I bought plants locally. A six pack and it was only called Gourmet Long Oriental. I think a generic description.

Zone envy here !
The ordinary eggplants are just flowering here.
The Brazilian Orange ones are full of smaller fruits.
They seem to have a harder skin to them.......almost like a gourd ?
I thought these would be softball size, but they seem to be hardening before they are golf ball size ?
First time that I have grown them.

CarolineScott said:Zone envy here !
The ordinary eggplants are just flowering here.
The Brazilian Orange ones are full of smaller fruits.
They seem to have a harder skin to them.......almost like a gourd ?
I thought these would be softball size, but they seem to be hardening before they are gold ball size ?
First time that I have grown them.

Well if you use it yourself might be allright. What I have found is that the green ones I tried weren't very good and of course no one wanted them either. Even the white ones are not as easy to give away than the various shades of purple. Never knew there were orange eggplants!

Next season I plan to be organized and start some eggplants myself from seeds. Buy maybe I will still buy some. These I have this year I bought at a local in town nursery and I really like them. So I might go and look and buy them again.

Caroline, I don't know anything about the "Brazilian Orange" eggplants, so can't help with that; but the eggplants that I have (Edirne and Shooting Stars) aren't doing a whole lot either, a few tiny fruits on them, and a few flowers. Probably due to the overall coolness of the summer here, I think. Actually not sure I'll bother with eggplant again -- I don't use them that much anyway, even when they do well; I've found that most recipes using eggplant work just as well with zucchini.

I find the texture of eggplant and zucchini different when used on recipes.