Cold Treatment
 

Does anyone know if eggplant responds to cold treatment in the same way that tomatoes do?

I've been trying different eggplants varieties for several years, but have yet to hit on the right variety/technique to get them to grow here where the summer temps just don't get that high. If I start them inside they're tall and spindly by the time the soil is warm enough to put them out. This year I decided to take over more of the flower beds on and plant eggplants in black grow bags the way I do a lot of the peppers, figuring the extra heat in the root zone works for peppers so maybe it will work for eggplant.

I also started them a touch early, and was thinking of moving them to the unheated garage where their soil temp will probably stay in the low 60's for the next few weeks until the weather turns. That would hopefully keep them from getting spindly and trigger earlier fruit set. However, an friend told me recently that he thought that once they had been chilled they'd be stunted and not recover since they're such a heat lover.

Any opinions? I have enough started I might try doing half and half and track the results...

No. Eggplants be a different animal. What they are doing is grafting cold resistant rootstock cultivars to eggplant seedlings to improve their growth in cool climate conditions. Ami

I start my eggplant same time as tomatoes and put them all through cold treatment...eggplant seem to me to benefit...certainly are not hurt, they still need the warm weather to take off, but do seem to be more stocky with more side branches lower down...

Boy, even here in Phoenix, I have my two plants in an inhospitable, hot spot. They just love heat. Even the roots like heat. The only time the heat seems to bother them is when it's 110 or higher.
If I were you, I'd use all the tricks you use with habaneros. And, put a plant next to your dryer vent!

You could experiment with some of them if you don't mind losing them. I like to plant my early so that I can plant out large plants because I feel they bear earlier for me that way. I generally transplant them up to gallon pots or slightly smaller. However, I don't have room under lights for those, so that means that sometime or other, they're subjected to colder conditions than they like. They tend to sulk and wilt down as if they're melting. Bringing them indoors and watering them with lukewarm water helps most of them recover. I've not had any of them stunted afterward--they do fine.

That said, I agree that keeping them warm is a benefit. If you have room, pot them up to larger pots and keep them in the brightest light you can. If you have to put them outside, be sure to protect them from the cold wind.

I've started double the number of plants I have the past two years, figuring it's time to devote some space and effort to figuring out how to get decent eggplant production here because I do love them. I think I will pot them up tomorrow and put half of them out with the tomato seedlings where they'll get the cold treatment and leave the others in my warn office with the chinense peppers. I've got a HPS light from my winter gardening experiments I can put on them if the regular lights and sunlight from the southwest windows don't seem to be keeping them happy.

Oh, the lengths we'll go to...

Thanks for everyone's thoughts!

leggy sounds like not enough or not strong enough light. i never grew them from seed but i suspect like chinenese peppers their roots want warmth and a lot of it.

i used to buy 2 or 3 plants and put them in 5 gallon pails on the part of the driveway that is asphalted in full sun all day. they baked out there and they LOVED it! no flea beetles as this was 125' from the garden. i'd get them a week before memorial day and put them out on memorial day. i swear the asphalt was 120-130 degrees in july and they just grew like crazy. if it got cool or cloudy they slowed down.

they really love heat and strong sun.

tom

I think you're on the right track with the black grow bags. Since I started growing mine in the largest-size black nursery tree pots, they've done very well for me. Well, between that and getting them started early and transplanting them up. Have you considered rigging up some kind of cold frame that you can use for hardening them off? Or even one of those cheap vertical greenhouse shelf units (tied down to something to the wind doesn't take it)? That way they'd get more light and stay a bit more compact (but watch that you don't accidentally cook them on hot days).

Failing that, you might consider overwintering a plant or two for next year--I root-prune and prune some of my really long-season peppers and overwinter them in a cool spot in the house. They look awful come spring, but once they start growing they're ready to flower much faster. I've not tried that with eggplants, but I'd bet it would work.

I start my eggplant with my tomatoes and they grow side by side until the tomatoes get planted out. My set up this year is shop lights over shelves in the basement and I am finding I much prefer the results over the warmer temps of growing them upstairs in my master bathroom like previous years. I have lights on for 16 hours per day, temps down there are a low of 57 at night and a high of 64 during the day.

So far I am quite pleased with what I see. As with the tomatoes, I have nice stalks, great color, they are not leggy, appear to be quite healthy, not growing fast like the tomatoes, but not sulking either. These will not go out with the tomatoes, I think I will baby them a bit longer inside, but I hope if they have grown down there in the temps they are in, they will not sulk when they go outdoors. We'll see....

I'm thinking it's starting with the warm temps and less than full sunlight that makes them get leggy, but other than putting them in a reflective box lined with shop lights and a HPS light above them I can't think of how to get them more light while keeping them warm.

They're with my chinense peppers under shop lights and are already looking spindly where the peppers are fine, so I'm potting up half of them into something deeper tonight and putting them in the garage with the tomatoes under shop lights there.

I wish I dared put them out on the driveway, but between appearance obsessed neighbors and kids playing basketball in the driveway I'd probably lose them one way or another.

We have a berm in the back that has been infested with some kind of horrid weed that spreads from roots. We've fought a losing battle with it for two years now, so my wife suggested I RoundUp the whole thing and lay down heavy landscape fabric and put some of my peppers and eggplant on that to hold it in place and bake the soil a bit to see if we can kill whatever it is this year. Hopefully a southwest slope, covered in black fabric with black grow bags on it will provide enough heat to finally get some eggplants for the grill!