如果你喜欢户外烧烤,那么在自家菜园里,茄子是必不可少的。配合种植和一点努力将有助于确保丰富的多汁,阳光祝福球的丰收。在盛夏时节,你一周能收获好几株茄子。多种几棵,它们就成了可以在生鲜市场上出售的赚钱的经济作物。
What Is Companion Planting?
Numerous horticulture research studies support the age-old wisdom of companion planting. Companion planting is a gardening method of placing plants that support and encourage the growth and well-being of other plants, close to each other.
Companion planting brings diversity and harmony to the homestead garden. The intermingling of compatible plants presents a diverse array of benefits. Companion planting helps control weeds, attracts pollinators to the garden, offers shade and shelter, conserves soil moisture, and wards off harmful insect pests and disease.
Environmentally and health-conscious gardeners cultivate organically grown foods: eggplant is no exception. Wishing to avoid exposure to toxic herbicides and pesticides, they choose to practice gardening methods that rely on nature, common sense, and a vigilant attitude to manage their garden production. Companion planting is a key ingredient in an overall gardening modality that is good for people, pets, plants, and the planet.
Best Companion Plants For Eggplant
For centuries, in many parts of the world, eggplant was grown strictly as an ornamental plant for its attractive foliage and eye-catching fruits. Within the flowerbeds, eggplant was paired with companion flowering plants.
Mexican marigold, nasturtium, snapdragons, and sunflowers repel aphids, white flies, flea beetles and ants. Nasturtium is also an excellent dense ground cover as well as a vining edible plant that ward off many types of crop-munching insects. Both the flowers and the leaves of nasturtiums are consumed in salads or used as an attractive plate garnish.
Legumes (peas and beans) enhance garden soil by converting nitrogen in the air, into nitrogen in the soil. Planting bush beans next to eggplants is also an effective method of keeping the Colorado potato beetle from decimating the garden crop. If you plant trellisgrowing peasor beans, be sure to plant them in a location where they will not shade eggplant: eggplant demands full sun for optimum growth, texture, and flavor.
Hot peppers are a good neighbor to eggplant and most other garden vegetables. Hot peppers emit a chemical from the plant roots that helps prevent Fusarium, root rot, and a wide range of otherplant diseases.
茄子有点容易被昆虫袭击。Strongly scented herbs such as thyme, rosemary, chamomile, lavender, horehound, oregano, sage,basil, tarragon, andall varieties of minthelp repel insect invaders repulsed by the pungent herbal scent emitted by the herbs. Thyme is especially effective against garden moths and aphids.
Savvy homesteaders plant herbs for medicinal and culinary use, to protect other plants, to attract pollinators, and to sell as a cash crop at their local farmer’s market.
Catnip is another plant that will keep flea beetles from infesting your garden. However, catnip negatively impacts he growth and development of peas and beans, so keep these two combative plants apart from each other.
茄子和菠菜是很好的伴侣,因为更高的茄子能遮蔽嫩菠菜,而菠菜有助于保持土壤中的水分,同时抑制杂草。菠菜是一种很有吸引力的可食用地被植物,可以放在花园中任何阳光充足的地方。
土豆、西红柿、番茄和辣椒,比如茄子,都是茄科的成员。作为一个家族,他们是兼容和支持的伴侣植物,与茄子混合。
About Eggplant
Native to China and India, eggplant (known as aubergine in the U.K. and Europe) is part of the nightshade plant familySolanum melongena. Cultivated today for its tasty edible fruit, eggplant is a nutrient-rich vegetable packed full of nutrition, fiber, and flavor. In South America, the shiny purple summer vegetable is known as brinjal. Fairly easy to grow, eggplant can be enjoyed raw, cooked, steamed, sautéed, grilled, and fried.
茄子自公元前5世纪在中国种植以来,中世纪之前是非洲的主食。早期品种的茄子相当苦,而新开发的品种是甜的和奶油,使它们成为家庭菜园的绝佳补充。
如今,中国、日本、土耳其、埃及和意大利是茄子最大的种植者和消费者。茄子是地中海饮食中受人尊敬的组成部分,在法国、意大利和希腊的许多烹饪准备中都是受人喜爱的配料。茄子有一种令人愉悦的微苦口感和柔软的海绵状口感。
Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is a close relative of potatoes, tomatoes, tomallitoes, goji berries, and peppers. For hundreds of years after eggplant’s introduction to Europe, the bitter nightshade plant was reserved as an attractive landscape decoration.
这种水果被认为是有毒的,据说会导致痴呆和精神错乱。几个世纪以来,西红柿一直被冠以有毒植物的错误名声。
Eggplant is available in a diverse array of cultivars including a wide range of hybrids. An edible ornamental plant, eggplant is typically a purplish-black in color and elongated or teardrop shaped.
Tips For Growing Eggplant
Propagated from seed, eggplant does best when started from transplants. A cold-sensitive plant, eggplant should not be set out in the garden until the soil has warmed and all danger of frost is passed.
Similar to tomatoes, eggplants suffer injury at low temperatures and fails to flourish until soil temperatures warms. Before moving transplants outdoors, it is important that seedlings be hardened off by reducing temperature and water.
When planting eggplant, choose a sunny location with loamy, well-drained fertile soil. Eggplant isn’t too picky, and will manage to grow in most garden conditions as long as the days are warm with plenty of sunshine.
为了准备好种植茄子的土壤,要把土壤做得很好,去掉岩石和根。茄子吃起来很重。种植前,在土壤中加入大量有机堆肥或成熟的草食动物粪便(如绵羊、山羊、马或牛),以增加额外的氮和其他重要营养物质。
Like other members of the nightshade family of plants, eggplant presents a sturdy vine with fruits hanging from it much like tomatoes. The eggplant reaches several feet in height at maturity. Plant seedlings approximately two feet apart in a row. Space rows three feet apart.
茄子一旦成熟,就相当耐旱,在炎热的夏天也能茁壮成长。然而,为了获得最佳的产量、风味和质地,每周至少要给植物提供一英寸的水。为了做到最好,茄子需要六到八周的夜间温度在70华氏度左右。
Eggplants Need Structural Support
As your plants mature, you will soon see why eggplant needs support. Eggplant can grow up to six feet tall. The ripe fruit is large and heavy.
Fruits vary in size, with larger varieties producing fruit that weighs up to a pound each. Without support, heavily laden plants bend and break. Keeping the fruit, especially elongated varieties, up off the ground helps prevent plant disease, defines fruit shape, and makes harvesting easier. Anticipate an abundant crop when choosing support (cages or trellis work well) or staking for your eggplants.
Harvesting Eggplant
When selecting eggplants for harvest, fruits should be solid and heavy for their size. No matter the variety or if the mature fruit is white, purple or green, the skin should be smooth and shiny without evident bruising or decay.
To determine if the fruit is ready for harvest, gently press the fruit with the pad of your thumb. If the spot bounces back it is ready to pick. If the indentation remains, the fruit is not yet ripe. Eggplant tends to bruise easily. Handle gently when harvesting.
Eggplant requires approximately 110 days to reach maturity. The crop is harvested across an extended period, until cold temperatures or the first frost inhibits growth.
References
Watch Your Garden Grow – Eggplant, University of Illinois
Eggplant, Cornell University
Field Performance of Bt Eggplants (Solanum melongena L.) in the Philippines, US National Library of Medicine – National Institute of Health
Eggplant, University of Florida
Kathleen Risasays
This is a wonderful zd very well written. Thank you