The eggplant is finally coming in plus weird weather

It is the end of August and we finally are starting to get good harvests of our eggplant.

Over the last eight weeks we’ve been able to harvest some eggplant but there has not been that many on the plants. Now the plants have a good amount eggplants on them that are sizing up.

The culprit of the eggplant being so late is the hot weather we had in July that killed the flowers right as they were about to form fruit. That is the most critical time for the eggplant and unfortunately there were several flushes of flowers that were lost due to the heat this year.

Last year the heat waves were earlier so we didn’t have much eggplant in July but we had a lot beginning in August.

The later start to having lots of eggplant doesn’t mean we will have a longer season as it will end in late October depending on the weather.

Our Japanese and Chinese eggplants are the most productive right now. We also have Rosa Bianca, Barbarella, Listada and globe eggplant.

The unusual weather we’ve had this summer is continuing with the forecasted high to be 101 degrees today and then by Friday the high will be 75 degrees. That will be very nice for harvesting in on Friday and Saturday will also be a lovely day.

Now that we’ve started transplanting in the field it will continue every week for the next month and half. This week we transplanted parsley, lettuce and broccoli.

We also direct seeded some radishes and spinach which we are seeding more often than some of the other ones that we direct seed every other week like carrots.

In the greenhouse we seeded kale, chard, broccoli and lots more lettuce. Every week our lettuce plantings are getting larger as they will take longer to grow and hopefully will hold in the field when ready to harvest for a little bit of time.

Last week’s direct seeded crops are all starting to germinate pretty consistently which is very exciting. For some of them like radishes that hopefully means around four weeks before we are able to harvest them. Others like carrots won’t be ready for another two months.

The carrots do get a little more attention right before they germinate to help combat the weeds. We planted a few beet seeds next to them that germinate quicker and once they pop up we go through the rows of carrots and flame weed them to knock back those first weeds.

That hopefully gives the carrots a little more room to grow and less competition right when they are germinating. Unfortunately we will still have to come through and hand weed them at some point.