Your comments and tips

09 Jul 10, mrs livingstone (United Kingdom - cool/temperate climate)

Can you prune back aubergine plants. They have just flowered but are overtaking the greenhouse. Would be obliged for your comments. (new to this)

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01 Jun 10, Andrea (Australia - tropical climate)

I've noticed that some people find cooking eggplants a little tricky. The mistake people often make is not to cook them long enough and they taste bitter and unpleasant. I used to cook them mainly in olive oil. But recently I've begun cooking an exclusively indian diet. I have some lovely recipes of eggplant in yoghurt curry (you should be able to find recipes on the web if interested and eat them served with basmati rice and other indian dishes). The point I wanted to make was that in my recipes, I've discovered that one can cook eggplants very well under the griller without oil as the first part of cooking. I believe this approach would transfer to any european style of cooking them as well. Simply cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, place it under the grill element with the skin side up. Cook until the soft and the skin starts to blister. Its about 15 minutes but check. After this you can finish off the cooking by frying it in oil with the rest of your ingredients and it shouldn't require as much oil as if you were cooking it from scratch in the frypan.

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08 Jun 10, Chris (Australia - cool/mountain climate)

Hi, another thing which works well for indian-style recipes is to cook the eggplant in a steamer first, instead of frying it which so many recipes suggest but which soaks up tons of oil. After steaming then just fry briefly in a little oil to caramelise the surface, or just use as-is.

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29 May 10, Kevin (United Kingdom - warm/temperate climate)

I planted two eggplants here in California and they not grown at all, help!

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04 Jun 10, (Australia - temperate climate)

Kevin, it could be anything! Not enough water, poor soil, pests? You could try a couple of new plants in different spots and see if that helps. Like tomatoes, eggplant like copious feeding - weekly feeding with liquid fertilizer can get them moving along.

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25 May 10, Elisa (Australia - tropical climate)

Can anyone help? How long can an eggplant plant produce good fruit for? I have harvested fruit from the same plants since 2008 but the fruit appears to be smaller than last years yield. Is it time to get younger plants? Prune the plants severly?

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27 May 10, (Australia - temperate climate)

Have you been giving them fertilizer regularly - seaweed folia spray and tomato fertilizer? Maybe they are just running out of food to make fruit?

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09 Jun 10, John Bee (Australia - sub-tropical climate)

I’ve grown several eggplants for the past three years with great fruiting results. Of course as soon as one plant started to look “oldish” I’d cut that one right back (quite heavily) give it a decent fertilizing (liquid if in a pot or granular if in the ground) and it would recover just great. I also gave it a really good soaking watering immediately after or with the fertilizing. I’d do that about every 6 months for each plant (but not at the same time so as to ensure a continual fruit supply). However just recently those plants have had it… Just plain worn out… I suspect a very heavy build up of root knot nematodes and the start of root and stem collapse. I reckon if you can get 2-3 years from an eggplant then that’s more than enough and then call it quits. From my observations you can get up to 3 years happily from a plant growing in the soil and about 2-2.5 years from one growing in a large container. The pruning back also helps a lot in controlling a pest problem like spider mites. I live in a lovely sub-tropical climate on the Gold Coast so the plants continually grow and fruit. The variety I like is the dwarf Lebanese type. I am about to publish an e-book on growing herbs and veggies in small spaces but more about that later Cheers John

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23 May 10, Lynn (Australia - sub-tropical climate)

My four eggplants look like they are healthy but no flowers have appeared yet. They are in a raised garden bed and have been in the ground about 12 weeks. Help please

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27 Mar 10, Kd (Australia - temperate climate)

Hi Al, there are a lack of bees this year, so many plants which are flowering are not being pollinated. Try hand pollination from the male to the female flowers.

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