Full question:
I have managed to grow a large eggplant with lots of flowers again this year but still no fruit. The flowers fall off. What am I missing?
Our response:
Eggplants haven’t done so well this year and we think it’s because there haven’t been so many bees around this summer due to all the rain we’ve had. That will affect your pollination. You can pollinate by hand – take a small paintbrush and flick it around gently inside the flowers which will result in pollen being transferred from the stamen to the stigma. This can be quite successful.
You may be short of potassium in your soil – comfrey is full of potassium, so making a comfrey tea is worthwhile and sheep pellets have a reasonable amount of potassium in them too. Potassium helps plants to set fruit.
Also two plants are better than one – if bees are around and about, there will more chance of them doing their pollinating work successfully.
Good luck! 🙂
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2 Responses
My tree tomatoes (tamarillos) get large holes in the leaves , edges chewed,rust patches and often have eggs on the back of the leaves. One tree is just a baby cutting, you’d think it’s hardly had time to pick up any bugs or diseases. To me it looks like 3 things, virus insects and mould. I need to know what to do for them please.
Hi Jean We think the rust is probably due to the humid climate of the north. You could apply a dousing of liquid seaweed to check this. We would recommend using Neem Oil for the bugs – apply it 3 times in the evening, each application being 3 days apart. See how you go with this regime 🙂