Your baskets are overflowing with eggplants these days, and in response to the queries of some, I feel compelled to explain the why and wherefore of this overabundance. There are three vegetables I grow in large quantities, all of which belong to the solanaceae, or nightshade, family – eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. In the case of the latter, great care is taken to avert disease and to continuously test different growing techniques, depending on timing (early, mid or late season) and location (open field or high tunnels). In any event, tomatoes require significant space and constant care. In the case of peppers and eggplant, it’s an altogether different story : blame it all on the tarnished plant bug (TPB for short), a ubiquitous pest that relishes pepper and eggplant flowers. When it attacks the flowers, in a matter of days it can slay generations of vegetables, creating huge harvest gaps. What’s an organic farmer to do, then? Plant far more than he/she actually needs and hope that the TPB attacks will be limited to 30 to 40% of the flowers, leaving enough mature fruit to fill your baskets.
Exceptionally this year, we’ve seen virtually no TPB in our fields – or at least not enough to cause any damage worth mentioning. Go figure. And so it is that we have plants bursting with blooms, each of which becomes a fruit which we have no choice but to harvest in order to preserve the overall health of the plant – letting them go to waste would be downright sacrilegious.
We will therefore be serving eggplant for a few weeks to come…