Thursday September 09, 2010
Heirloom Breeds & Seeds:
Where is the corn and eggplant?
It's truly harvest time and it seems the abundance and celerity of the harvest has picked up. It's a bountiful and melancholy time. The morning mist is postcard perfect with a nip in the air while the days are still warming up. Jacket weather is not far away.
Here's what Elizabeth Keen from Indian Line Farm has to say about the harvest:
Where is the corn and eggplant? That is certainly the question many have been asking. The eggplant remains a bit of a mystery to me. In years past I have noticed that eggplant seemed to enjoy abundant rain and was not deterred by overly cool temperatures as long as the plants got off to a good start. We always plant the eggplant the 3rd week of May and then keep the plants covered with floating row cover for at least 2 weeks. This keeps the plants as warm as possible during what can be still a chilly time of year. Late May this year was blistering hot and I saw no need to cover them and, in fact, thought I might lose plants because the cover in combination with the biodegradable black plastic can really be overly hot. However, it turned cold again in early June and the plants were getting eaten by flea beetles so I covered them for two weeks. When we took the cover off, the plants were noticeably bigger and by all accounts healthy. We waited and continued to keep the plants as moist as we could through our drip irrigation system. And we have continued to wait. After a small flush in July the eggplants have all but petered out. The plants seem fine, but there has been very little flower production. I have asked around and it seems more than just I have the same problem. My conclusion is that eggplant won't flower much above 90 degrees and they really like water. We can hope for better next year.