Yes, it’s wise to create a support for eggplants. Staking eggplant keeps the fruit from touching the ground , which in turn, reduces the risk of disease and fosters fruit shape, especially for elongated eggplant varieties.
Some authors claimed ideally, you want to stake eggplant when it is small — at seedling stage when it has a few leaves or at transplanting time. Staking requires a support that is 3/8 to 1 inch (9.5 to 25 mm.) thick and 4-6 feet long (1-1.8 m.). This can consist of wooden or metal rods coated with plastic, but really anything can be used.
Do eggplants cross pollinate?
Eggplants (Solanum melongena) do not have a male or female gender, but they are endowed with cross -pollinating male and female flowers on each plant. We tend to think of the eggplant as a vegetable, but like the tomato, it is classified as a fruit.
Another question we ran across in our research was “Do eggplants need pollination?”.
For eggplant flowers to produce fruit, they need pollination . Since eggplant flowers have both male and female parts, they are self-pollinating, but in some cases this isn’t sufficient for fruit production.
This begs the question “How to cross-pollinate eggplant?”
You can perform this action on the same flower that you took the stamen from, or you can do it to a different flower to cross-pollinate the eggplant. Placing a fan in your garden or in your greenhouse and allowing it to blow across your eggplant flowers will stimulate pollination and may improve the plant’s overall yield.
Why do eggplant plants need support?
If you’ve ever grown eggplant, you probably realize that supporting eggplants is imperative . Why do eggplant plants need support? Fruit comes in several sizes depending upon the variety, but staking eggplants regardless of size will also retard disease while allowing for optimal growth and yield. Read on to learn about eggplant support ideas.
The answer is that eggplants are bushy plants with large leaves borne on woody stems. Some varieties can attain heights of up to 4 ½ feet (1.3 m.). Fruit varies in size with large fruited cultivars over a pound (453 gr.) in weight while the smaller varieties tend to be especially heavy bearers. For this reason alone, providing a support for eggplants is vital.
How does cross pollination occur in plants?
Cross-pollination occurs when you have the same plant of different varieties in a garden space . When the wind blows, or a bee travels into the flower of one plant variety, and the pollen of this plant makes its way into the flower of another type.
Is cross pollination possible between different varieties of plants?
Fortunately, however, this is not true. The female flowers of each crop can be fertilized only by pollen from male flowers of the same species. Cross pollination, however, can occur between varieties within a species . Cross pollination can be seen in the squashes and pumpkins.