Happy plant.

, Beth. Yeah, it's like a light switch just got turned on - just this week, here, since we had unseasonable cold after Mother's Day. You're probably a couple weeks ahead of me.

Know what you mean about SWC - this eggplant's actually in a Walmart self-watering plant spa, with just a pile of Dynamite plant food on top, and some lime sifted into the potting mix. Grows just like the growboxes - just a bit smaller, with a 1-day-max reservoir in high summer. The difference between my peppers-in-growbox and poor little peppers-in-the-garden is just night and day.

I'm not wholly convinced about the cukes yet, though. They may do better in the cruddy ground. My beans do. Bush beans and pole beans both - never managed to harvest a single bean from the growboxes. Dunno why.

That must have been quite a job, lining 6 beds! I'd love to see your potatoes! I've never grown those, and I'm wanting to... the fingerlings look especially tempting in catalogs.

Beth, your YG potatoes sound awesome...

Now, that's the danger with growing your own, you know? I just can't buy supermarket cukes anymore. (Well, I haven't been able to stand them since I got back from Japan, actually. Years I haven't grown cukes since then - I didn't eat cukes.) Tomatoes... I didn't need to taste my own homegrown in order to not like the supermarket article much.

Oh, well, at least beans and zucchini don't have that problem. Nor any of the spinach or eggplants I've grown so far, but maybe this time it'll be different, and I'll have an eggplant worth falling in love with. Or have you found a lovable special green bean? 96 bean plants is a lot!

Though I envy you the longer season, I don't envy your better bugs and varmints. Something's been leaving snout-shaped holes in my annual patch, but I think it's just a skunk after grubs. If so, all power to him. Nothing's interested in my veggies. Well, nothing with fur instead of 6 icky feet, anyway...

Yes, best of luck gardening this year!!!

 Buds arrived. Removed the cloche, thinking the leaves were pretty cramped, and it just wasn't getting tall enough to escape the cloche. Sure enough, within days, the plant is twice the diameter - and not much taller.

Aphids arrived. So far, just picking them off by hand and seeing what predators do - no pesticides. Yet.

Plant is well, developing first fruit. Like most of the veg plants downstairs, I added some growbox nutes - just a tablespoon.

Hi, Beth,

Yeah, my first egg is peeking out now, almost 2" long. And yesterday, I feasted on my first four pearl and cucino cukes - yummm! Also from my growbox - I've got three small variety plants in a growbox and three Japanese cukes in the ground. And lots and lots of green tomatoes, as you say. I think I have more than a week to wait, tho.

YUM!!! Ate my first gretel eggplant last night - this is THE best eggplant I've ever tasted! Seeds virtually unnoticeable. Didn't try the skin yet - just sauteed with butter and onions. Highly recommended!!! First harvest beat the advertised date by 7 days! Slenderer than I expected. That's OK, it tastes great.

Actually, the description at Park said first harvest at 3-4 inches long at 55 days. So this fruit was that size even earlier. Should try a couple of the next batch at baby veggie stage...

Hi, Beth,

Hm. I guess I've mostly eaten white or my mini eggplants (bambino and twinkle) the past few years. The white ones I get in the supermarket definitely taste better - milder - than the purples, and these gretel even more so, tenderer, with very few seeds. None of the bitter element of eggplant that I was taught to salt and sweat out. So yes, I think so. They taste great! Haven't tried the skin yet (I usually don't like eggplant skin), but it seemed unusually tender, too. But I've never tried ichiban, etc., so can't compare to that.

Yeah, this a pretty white. And the main feature of it was supposed to be that you could eat it at any size and it would taste great, so easier to mismatch fruits from a single plant when you wanted to cook them, rather than when they were ready.

Are you growing eggplant this year? What kind?

I should try ichiban, if I ever grow more than one eggplant. So far, I really like this gretel for eggplant # 1.

105... oy. Stay safe. It's supposed to drop back below 90 here tomorrow, and below 85 again to stay a while by Friday. I hope you get relief soon, too!

Aside from the plants in direct A/C compressor outflow, mine all seem to be enjoying the heat. Especially the cantaloupe, whose little melons are ballooning before my eyes. Large egg-sized already, from couldn't-tell-if-they-took on Sunday. Not so many tomato flowers, but they're all heavily loaded with fruit anyway. I hope your temps aren't above any fruit-failure thresholds!

Harvested another 11 eggplant this week. One of the features of this variety is that you're at choice when to pick them - anytime after they're 3" long, to however big you want them.

14 eggplant harvested this week, though the plant sure looks yellow - still bearing well, though its flowers have slowed down. Made two batches of ratatouille. Yummm....

Still harvesting great. Doesn't look well, but...

The eggplant's starting to look better - green, new flower open. No fruit on it in this picture because I picked everything just yesterday. I think the growbox nutes helped a lot. But also, I sprayed it with a neem oil based fungicide. The other day I saw an army of tiny bugs near the pole beans - like thousands of ants, at mite scale, which is very hard to see on a furry leaf. I'm wondering if the "rust" (fine yellow spottiness) the beans and eggplant have suffered, have been a combination of fungus and mites.

I hope I'll get a few more fruit out of this before it's too cold. Apparently eggplant don't set fruit / hold on to fruit when the temperatures dip below 60°F (15C). That should be the norm within a couple weeks, and it happens occasionally now. We humans are loving it, of course. Indian summer is Connecticut's best season by far.

Hi, Beth, welcome home! I'm so glad you told me that re your eggplants. I might have tossed the plant otherwise. But it's coming back, now flowering and setting more fruit. I'll get a few more off of it! Good little plant.

I was sure my tomatoes had blight. But renewing their fertilizer with the growbox standard nutes yielded quite a revival. The yellow leaves stayed mostly yellow, but lots of new green growth. It has been a very long hot summer. Today, I moved my poor melon plant into the shade. The cucumbers aren't relocateable. Well-watered, but utterly limp. Now that's hot, when cucurbits can't take the heat!