Woohooooo! My Aubergines set fruit!

[eye1der]

i now have a palm sized aubegine on my plant, altho it looks to be the only one so far, it is my first attempt and it is kept covered outside. im pleased as i have read how difficult they can be to grow, any tips to encourage more flowers to set?

I always have a few hanging baskets of flowers left over which I leave in the tunnel, these attract lots of pollinating insects so not had any issues regarding poor pollination. so try planting more flowers!

heres one of my plants in a pot

[westwiltspatio]

I was wondering what size to pick my Calliope aubergine at too - at the moment it's about an inch and a half long. One website suggests they get to 2", another says 4", so I don't know. The plant looks a bit bedraggled so I don't know if I'll get any more off it (it's underneath a shelf, so gets dripped on when I water the one above, and also doesn't get as much light as the others).

I also have several tiny Snowy aubergines set, and one Long Purple. The Long Purple is about 3 inches long at the moment and I'm wondering how long I can hold out before picking it. Will it taste ok picked a little early?

[eye1der]

not sure about when to pick but as ive lots of them i might try a few tonight...

[w33blegurl]

I was wondering what size to pick my Calliope aubergine at too - at the moment it's about an inch and a half long. One website suggests they get to 2", another says 4", so I don't know.

The packet of Calliope seeds (now that I've found it) that I have says 4" so I reckon I'll go with that. They are not that far off now so hopefully will get to try them! Hope thats not the only 2 fruits I get!!

[Comfreyfan]

So far 2 of my 3 plants have fruit set, the third plant had flowers which have just gone over, but so far haven't fallen off, so fingers crossed for 3 out of 3. I've had no fruit at all for the last 2 years, I wasn't intending to bother with them this year, but my godaughter gave me some seeds so I had to give them one more go!

[jonohanson]

We though we would try Aubergine, so bought one from wilko's as a seedling, and one day when watering the G/h snapped the growing tip off, well it sat there and sat there doing nothing, then went really busy and put loads and loads of flowers out so hand pollinated(just in case). And now we have about 8 Aub's growing away nicley.

[annacruachan]

I was wondering that, what size do you let them grow to?

The Ophelia aubergines are at their best at about duck's egg size. I did grow a couple larger than that, but they were already brown round the seeds inside and did not taste as nice as the younger ones.
My two plants are producing so many that I'm giving some away - but not too many as I want to make the aubergine and mango chutney mentioned earlier on this thread. Does anyone have a recipe, please?