Comment

Comment by James Stratton on October 14, 2013 at 10:24am

And here I'd thought I'd learned something new. She even went out to my grow beds and showed me the different peppers. One had three bumps on the bottom while the other had four. I can't remember now which one she said was male or female.

Are eggplants self-pollinating or do they require some kind of manual pollination. Mine just grew on their own. They produce like wildfire but then petered out. I thought it was the changing seasons but maybe they sucked all the nutrients out that they needed to grow. Plus, I never pruned them. They took over an entire grow bed. Oh well, if I tried to prune them, in my ignorance, I'd probably had killed them.

Comment by Alex Veidel on October 14, 2013 at 6:22am

The difference between my eggplant and I: One of us is a vibrant, strong, and healthy specimen, and the other is an eggplant :)

Comment by Alex Veidel on October 14, 2013 at 6:19am

Actually, peppers are self pollinating, and the whole female/male pepper thing is a myth. But there are some plants that have male and female flowers (like squash). Yeah, I had two eggplants, and I think my production mostly was lacking due to poor pruning practices, and maybe a phosphorus deficiency.....Lot's of flowers (which I pollinated by hand) but none of them really took.

Comment by James Stratton on October 14, 2013 at 6:16am

I bought some starter eggplant from a home store and was told they would not work well in an aquaponic system. I was surprised when my two eggplants started producing so much that I had to bring some of the fruit? in to work to give it away. Did you just have the one eggplant? maybe two are needed to produce. I just learned this year (from my daughter) that peppers can be male or female. Who'da thunk?