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Post by chrysanthemum on Nov 30, 2023 20:13:19 GMT -6
It’s still pretty small, but it’s growing, and I’m excited. I wasn’t really sure I could do this either, but so far it seems to be working. The other day I moved my mother’s sticky flycatcher from her kitchen to a hook on the plant stand just beside the eggplant. It’s been catching a few little gnat-type insects. I gave the eggplant another pruning the other day and was surprised to find a second fruit already poking out on a calyx that faces the window. This one seems to be growing faster.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 6, 2023 20:53:42 GMT -6
Here’s a photo I took tonight of that second fruit on the Battir eggplant. It’s longer and slimmer and darker than the first and seems to be growing faster. I figure the two have the same genetics as they’re on the same plant, but this one looks a bit more how I had expected from the photos I had seen. It will be interesting to see how the two compare as they both mature.
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Post by woodeye on Dec 6, 2023 21:44:16 GMT -6
All I can think of to say is Wow! Very nice...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 11, 2023 16:09:36 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
Somehow I missed this post until today. That egg plant is really impressive! I've never gotten anything to fruit in winter. The closest I've come is to have blossoms, but never any fruit. You must have an exceptionally green thumb!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 14, 2023 20:59:40 GMT -6
Thanks, Heavyhitterokra. I think the exceptionally green thumbs really belong to my mom, but I got a little bit of them passed down. Unfortunately, I think I’ve discovered a spider mite infestation on my eggplant. I did some extra pruning tonight and submerged all the heavily infested leaves in soapy water. I may have to go into town to find some Neem Oil and a new spray bottle and see what I can do. I don’t want to lose this plant at this point. If anyone has other suggestions, I’m all ears/eyes. Thanks.
This is quite a close-up photo that I had to take to get a better look at what was on the plant.
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Post by macmex on Dec 15, 2023 6:57:18 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum, I have had spider mite problems in my greenhouse when producing sweet potato slips. Here are two ideas for dealing with them, though what you've already mentioned is good.
1) If you have any days that it gets pretty warm out there, you might set the plant outside in a weedy area of the garden for the day. I've found for some reason, that even in the winter, I'll find lady bugs roaming in dead nettle in the garden whenever it warms up a bit. They really help with spider mites.
2) Setting the plant in the kitchen sink and spraying it with luke warm water, using the sink spraying nozzle also seems to help.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 15, 2023 15:42:57 GMT -6
In light of the spider mite infestation, I decided to harvest my two eggplant fruits this morning. I just wanted to lessen the strain on the plant, and they seemed to have stopped growing anyway. I cut off more of the leaves and the top, and my mom had just a little of a spray by Bonide called Eight. It’s apparently a mixture of sulfur and pyrethrin. I used that on the remaining leaves. Today woud have been a good day to move the planter outside, but I need help to move it because it holds ten gallons of soil, I believe, and can have a reservoir of four gallons of water. It needs pretty careful handling. Both my mom and my husband are a bit under the weather, so I just treated it in place as best I could. My mom did move her Christmas cactus outside and spray them down with water. We’re also trying to increase the humidity inside the house, and I’ll keep spraying the eggplant leaves with water as I can. I fried up the eggplant fruit in olive oil this afternoon. It tasted very mild but was creamy and delicious. There were seeds forming in the older one, but I didn’t notice any particular bitterness in them. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep the mites at bay and that the plant will be stronger going forward so that I can get some more fruit that I can let ripen completely for seed.
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Post by woodeye on Dec 16, 2023 9:27:55 GMT -6
Great job, chrysanthemum. You've dared to go where most eggplant growers never tread. Very nice pictures, you've set the bar extremely high...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 17, 2023 14:30:01 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
It sounds like you're certainly on the right track. I was going to suggest Pyrethrin, (Not to be confused with Pymethrin) but it sounds like you've already tried that.
The stuff I use in my organic garden is called Pyganic-Pro. It's made of Chrysanthemum oil. (I used to have to take my best guess at spelling chrysanthemum, but corresponding on this website has somewhat improved my horticultural spelling skills).
Thanks, for that marked improvement chrysanthemum.
Pyganic-pro is kind of high-dollar, but 32 ounces of it will last for years and years. It's hard to imagine that it's actually toxic to insects, as it smells like doughnuts firing in sunflower oil, but I've seen it paralyze insects instantly.
I don't know that it actually kills anything, but it does make the bugs fall off the plants, where they lie immobilized until they get cooked by the hot sun. I certainly wouldn't be worried about any of it harming your family either, which is more than I can say about most insecticides. (I don't like spraying poison on the things I plan on myself or others eating). That's the main reason I use it. Plus, it's a direct contact agent, so it shouldn't hurt the bees or other things that you're not directly spraying it on.
Here's a link to the supplier where I bought mine. www.domyown.com/pyganic-pro-p-1335.html?co_var=3
That's really impressive that you were able to harvest those egg plant fruit this time of year. Thanks, for sharing those photos.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Dec 24, 2023 11:35:41 GMT -6
Grr. I just lost my post, so here goes again. [That’s what I get for changing tabs to check on spellings.] Thanks, HeavyHitterOkra, for chiming in about Pyganic-Pro. I appreciate it. I wanted to correct something I mentioned in an earlier post about Bonide “Eight” that my mom had. It’s apparently NOT a mixture of sulfur and Pyrethrins as I had stated earlier. Family circumstances had kept me from getting to a farm store in person after the mite discovery, and so I ordered some Eight spray and dust, and I didn’t do my due diligence on reading product labels. When my products arrived, I saw that the Bonide Eight Dust was Permethrin, the synthetic that’s highly recommended for a tick repellent. It is highly toxic to other small creepy crawlies, and that includes bees and other beneficials, as there is long-lasting residual activity with it. It’s also toxic to aquatic life when it runs off. Even though this is a houseplant and not in the environment, I did not want to use such a product around my family or my mom’s cat, or put it on something we hope to be able to eat in the future. I was surprised to find that my Bonide Eight Spray was a different product even from that. It was Lambda-Cyhalothrin [or something close since I’m not changing tabs again to double check]. It’s also a synthetic that was not what I was looking for. I’m thankful that both of these products are unopened and returnable. I was able to get to the farm store in person yesterday where I could check the labels of each product. I bought some Bonide MiteX to try since the mites had come back in force. It’s simply a mixture of cottonseed, clove, and garlic oils, but it did get good reviews, and I feel comfortable spraying that inside. I need something I’ll be able to apply regularly, I think, and the weather hasn’t been conducive for moving my heat-loving plants outside. I feel comfortable using this in place. Bonide does apparently still have the mixture of Sulfur and Pyrethrins, and it’s on a product called “Tomato and Vegetable Formula.” Who knows whether these will change around, though, it’s definitely worth it to check labels before applying things. I just didn’t want anyone getting Eight because I had mentioned it earlier with an incorrect summary of its ingredients. Here’s a picture of the eggplant in its current shape. I just pruned some topmost leaves off again as that’s where the mites had been clustering. There’s ginger around it and za’atar in a planter in the back of the bigger planter, so I’m spraying those, too. Right now my goal is just to keep the eggplant alive and healthy so that it can bear fruit at some point. It does have some large calyces which may imply that a fruit is developing, and it has some buds and a just past bloom. It has been dropping blooms, though, perhaps as preservation since the mites have been damaging it. I’m going to try to keep them in check better in the hopes of saving the plant. If it doesn’t make it, I do have just a few more seeds of this special variety. I just don’t want to give up on this one yet as it has done so well so far.
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