The Little Eggplant that Could

Now all us gardeners have our holy grail plants. You know the ones. Yeah, the ones that you plant knowing that your garden is in some way deficient to it's needs but you just MUST have one or your life won't be complete. One of mine is Eggplant..

The reasons why I shouldn't bother with Eggplant in my garden are

• We don't get warm enough
• Our season is too short
• When you are growing them as annuals they are hungry plants and my soil isn't good enough yet
  

As a gardener there are three ways to approach these plants. The first is pretty obvious, simply not to try growing them in the first place. Now of course that is no fun, as a breed gardeners seem to be a determined bunch so this isn't a likely solution for most of us. The second option is to decide "this is war" and spend as much time, money and effort as your pride dictates is required to change the environment in such a way that your Grail will grow, sound familiar. The third and the one I do my best to subscribe to is give yourself permission to fail without guilt.

The third choice works best when your initial outlay was low to start with. Lucky for me a packet of Eggplant seed costs less than $3 and that will cover at least 5 years worth of growing. As long as occasionally I do get a decent crop I am ahead, or at least break even. Sure can be hard to watch a seasons hard work culminate in a dreadful looking plant that produced one fruit out of self defence but gardening on the fringes is about both learning and luck.

The luck comes when we get a hotter than normal season, like this last one. I haven't been gardening long enough to even try and pick in August what type of season we are going to have so I plant and accept that most years I am dooming myself to failure. The learning comes in by knowing what Eggplant want and making small changes to my normal gardening environment to give them the best chance. By planting them out in pots rather than the garden so the root will be warmer than usual. Choosing ceramic over plastic because it will retain the heat better overnight. Feeding the soil to the hilt to ensure that in the small chance we do get conditions that they like it can spend all of it's energy to grow rather than attempting to find food.

Without the luck the learning still produces a sad sight.. Without the learning you need a whole lot more luck to succeed.