I’ve never had much luck growing aubergines. My theory is that I need a good greenhouse with an open window or two, and to grow them in really good compost with lots of liquid feed through the summer, surrounding them with marigolds to help bring in the bees.
But, I’ve never grown them like that, and they’ve never done brilliantly. I keep trying though, and this year I have a little cloche tunnel so I’ve decided to grow them in that.
It’s still early days, but I planted three plants a few weeks ago, back in early-ish May. They were the only things I bothered planting as I prefer to plant in late May. My thinking was that I’d like to get them off to an early start. Two got totally annihilated by slugs, and one remained. I then got another three, and planted them about a week ago.
What I’ve found interesting is that the plants I planted more recently (on the left) have outgrown the one that I planted in May.
I thought about it for a while, and I have no idea if there’s any truth in this, but it struck me that a plant that is planted out too early, with unfavourable conditions, must go into some kind of survival mode and then struggles to come out of that survival mode again, even when the conditions change. I imagine the poor things roots being all tense and constricted, like the human nervous system when it’s under stress.
Gardeners often refer to plants being “stressed” and perhaps there’s more in that word than we think.
I’m hoping that the newbies will flourish somewhat in their little cloche tunnel. I’ve got some seaweed fertiliser to feed them with this weekend, which I’ll keep up over the summer. And I’ll be mulching too soon as I’m going away for a couple of weeks and want to try and keep weeds down while I’m gone. Fingers crossed, this could be my year for an aubergine crop. We’ll see…!