Gardening

AUBERGINE — or eggplant or brinjal or baigan — isn’t the easiest crop to grow in our climate, but if you can give it the right conditions and a long growing season it’s definitely worth a try.

Although it’s usually raised under glass in Britain, there are now cultivars bred for patio or windowsill use. To grow it uncovered outdoors you need a long, hot summer and a lot of luck.

Seed catalogues list numerous varieties with fruit of many different colours, shapes and sizes, but for a first attempt there are just two I’d recommend.

If you’ll be growing in a greenhouse, as you might with tomatoes or cucumbers, the most popular and dependable aubergine is probably Moneymaker. It makes a sturdy plant and its fruits look how you’d expect a traditional aubergine to look — large, heavy, long and purple.

For something more compact, suited to growing in a pot on a very sunny patio or in a conservatory or on a windowsill, many UK gardeners go for Patio Baby. At its tallest it won’t be much over 20” (50cm), and a bit less in width. The dark purple-to-black fruits, of course, are proportionally smaller — two or three inches (5-8cm) long, and egg-shaped.

Mid-February is a good time to start the seeds off, provided you’re confident of being able to keep the young plants at a fairly constant temperature until spring. I find that 20°C (68°F) is about right.

Germination is chancy below that, but too warm and the seedlings can end up leggy rather than sturdy. At every stage of their lives aubergines need warmth and plenty of light.

Sow each seed in a small pot or in a module. They’ll generally take around 10 days to germinate.

As the plants outgrow their pots carefully move them on to progressively larger pots, avoiding disturbing the roots as much as you can. If an aubergine’s going to be grown permanently in a container, it should end up in one with a diameter of at least 12” (30cm).

I won’t move my aubergines to my unheated greenhouse until early May, though in an artificially heated greenhouse you could probably get away with April.

They can be planted out at two per peat-free growbag, or two feet (61cm) apart in the border soil. My greenhouse soil consists largely of dust and rubble, but if yours is rich and moisture-retentive enough to support tomatoes and cucumbers then it’ll be fine for aubergines.

Grown behind a window the plants ideally need to be south-facing, or at least south-west. Patio plants will do best against a south-facing wall.

When a plant is 8-12” (20-30cm) tall remove the final inch or so of the main stem, to encourage bushy growth.

Watering needs to be regular and frequent. The soil or compost they’re growing in doesn’t want to be soggy but must stay moist.

From when the first flowers appear, feed aubergines weekly with any fertiliser intended for tomatoes.