hello friends, in today's episode we'll
look at growing a purple eggplant
variety that can be grown easily in both
containers and raised beds so we will be
starting our seeds about eight weeks
before planting it out so we are sowing our
seeds here in January in this seed
starting kit and what you do is just
bury the seeds slightly inside the soil and
then label them i'm using these ice
cream sticks here remember what I've
sowed in these seed starting kits and
once you've sowed the seeds they need
warm temperature to germinate and since
its winters I kept it inside the house
under this grow light and this grow
light is a very effective way of
starting your seeds indoors I will post
a link to this grow light in the video
description so you can get one for
yourself and in December when it's cold
outside these seeds will thrive in these
conditions and after about eight weeks
you will have plants that look like this
they're pretty healthy and small plants
and you can either transplant them
directly
I'm gonna be transplanting them into
these five pots first so to prepare a
mix for these pots
i'm going to be using the following
recipe I'm going to be using one part of
perlite, one part of vermiculite and
then I'm going to be adding two parts of
peat moss and finally I'm going to be
adding one part of compost and you can
even use worm castings if you do not
have compost now this makes a very good
mix a very porous and a very well
draining mix that will help sustain the
plant for the next couple of weeks maybe
a little bit more now if you want you
can time your sowing in such a way that
you transplanted these plants directly
into the soil your raised beds or your
container i still had a lot of time
before the weather warmed up so I put
them in these smaller containers where
they could still sustain for at least
one or two weeks maybe more
and finally what you do is you fill up
all your containers with this potting
mix that we just created and then plant
all the seedlings inside it and remember
you need to provide a good liquid
fertilizer while these plants are growing
[music]
and about 10 weeks later you can see
that we are now transplanting our
seedlings into larger containers so for
eggplants I recommend that you use at
least a 16-inch wide 16-inch high container
they also grow well in five gallon pots
now this part has about seven to ten
gallon capacity so it grows very well in
this one container but you can use
five-gallon pots the eggplants would
grow well but the production from the
eggplant is not as high so i recommend
that you use something like the pot
you're seeing here just about 16 inches
in diameter 16 inches in height and
holds about 7 to 10 gallons of soil
and 14 weeks later you can see that the
eggplant has grown really well it has
good growth the leaves look very healthy
and this eggplant variety actually
produces very good quality plants now
you might see some leaves that are
slightly yellow in color as you can see
here slightly Brown you can just remove
those leaves
these leaves usually develop at the
bottom part of the plant and once you
remove them
you can get a lot of air into this plant
around the bottom part of the plant
which is good for plants and you also
have much better accessibility into your
eggplants the fruits that are formed on
the lower part of the container
and as you can see here the fruits are
forming very well very deep colored
purple eggplants as you can see here and
we will be able to harvest these very
soon now eggplants need to be planted in
full Sun they need about six to eight
hours of sunlight every day and you need
to water them once a day or even twice a
day sometimes during very hot sunny days
but make sure that they always stay hydrated
[music]
if you are in your garden early morning
you can see a lot of bumblebees and
these buzzing bumblebees are the natural
pollinators for eggplant
unfortunately the bee population has
been decreasing due to the rampant use
of pesticides and we have to resort to
hand pollination so here you can see a
very simple technique by using a powered
toothbrush we just gently touch the
flowers to disperse the pollen around
the stigma of the flower in eggplant
it's the same flower so it's an easy technique
and now for the moment of
truth our harvest this is what we all
wait for and in June we started
harvesting our eggplant and they look
beautiful
I mean these are absolutely gorgeous
deep purple eggplants and you can start
harvesting these eggplants in june and
we were able to continue harvesting
these eggplants for a long time and i
will shortly show you all the harvest
videos from june through november but
first let's look at how this eggplant
looks like from the inside as you can
see here the exterior skin has a nice
deep purple color and from the inside
there are some seeds in this eggplant as
you can see here and the key is to
harvest your eggplants when they're
tender and young don't wait too long to
harvest your eggplant otherwise you're
going to get a lot of black hard seeds
inside your eggplant
which is not something you want
so this is pretty much
the perfect time you can
harvest your eggplants
and i will continue to
show you the harvest videos
and we do eat
a lot of eggplant we usually stir-fry
them with spices and you can see a short
recipe here that you can easily make
with the eggplants that you grow in your garden
and while we look at all our harvests
from june through november i'll give you
some more tips on growing eggplant now
eggplants are very similar to tomatoes
in one regard they do need high nitrogen
fertilizers when you're starting out the
seedlings they need to grow a lot of
leaves a lot of foliage but when they
start flowering you have to stop your
high nitrogen fertilizers also called
all-purpose fertilizers just stop that
and start feeding them with a vegetable
fertilizer now whether you use organic
vegetable fertilizers some of you like
to use inorganic vegetable fertilizer
also called synthetic fertilizers
that's your choice
everybody has a choice and they need to
understand the pros and cons of using an
organic fertilizer versus a synthetic
fertilizer but in either case the
eggplants that you grow at home will be much
better tasting than the ones you find in
the store and here you can see beautiful
looking at plants starting in June now
in July the number of eggplants on the
plant were the most you can see a lot of
eggplants growing in this plant and this
plant is on a raised bed now I've
usually seen that the more soil you have
available for the plants the larger the
plants grow and the bigger harvest you
get so in this case these eggplants are
growing on a raised bed and you can see
that they have a lot of eggplants growing
and here is our harvest in July and
moving on to August we continued
harvesting a lot of eggplants in August
it was very hot in southern california
during august so we were able to harvest
a lot of eggplants you can see couple of
varieties here and then in September
as well it was quite warm and we were
able to harvest a lot of eggplants in
September now eggplants also love epsom
salt which is a naturally occurring
mineral you need to add 1 tablespoon of
epsom salt per gallon of water and then
feed it to your eggplants every three to
four weeks
this has a tremendous effect on eggplant
because they have very high magnesium
and sulfur requirements you can see here
in October the eggplants are still
growing very healthy and we're
harvesting some more eggplants from our
raised beds
and it has started to cool down in
October a little bit so the production
is decreasing and finally in November
this month we were still able to harvest
a few eggplants but in November you can
really see a difference the eggplants
have now become very less in number
the days are cooling down and it's time
to switch over to the cooler season
crops but we did make a final November
harvest of the eggplant
the ones growing in the
raised beds as well as the one growing
in the container were producing
eggplants in november and throughout the
growing season I never had to use any
insecticide or pesticide for my eggplants
however if you do want to use some
insecticides and pesticides you should
use the ones that are listed on your screen
they're organic and they're safe but i
recommend you do not use any pesticides
because the bee problem is a genuine one
you still want a lot of bees in your
garden pollinating your flowers so stay
away from any kind of pesticides if you can
so there we have it folks that was our
episode on growing eggplants the purple
eggplants, if you have any questions do put
in a comment below if you like our video
give us a thumbs up and we'll see you
again soon happy gardening