Harvesting . . .

My husband took really good care of my garden and I was able to harvest several eggplants, sweet peppers, and a couple of funny looking squash. I will harvest the hot peppers in a couple of days. I know that there are a bunch of tomatoes that are hiding, but they will soon be made into pizza sauce.

You may have noticed that some of my pictures have a brown smudge in the upper left corner. I am not sure why it is there as my camera is pretty new. I will try to find out what the problem is.

Eggplant

I am amazed at how productive my Little Spook Eggplant has been! It has spread out because the fruits are weighing the branches down. I have harvested 4 of them, and there are 25 more that I am leaving to mature so I can harvest the seeds. I have never grown an eggplant before and have found it to be nearly care-free. Now that the nights are cooling off and the daytime temperatures are up and down, the plant is becoming stressed. The ants are farming the aphids on this plant, but there are also beneficials taking care of things. At first I was spraying the back sides of the leaves with water, where the aphids were, but then I saw the lady bugs and other good bugs increase in numbers to offset the aphids. This picture shows 10 eggplant fruits! The leaves are really more green than it shows in this picture.

Little Spook Eggplant

My "Little Spook" eggplant has arrived! This is the first eggplant that I have grown--now I guess I will have to eat it. Anyone know a good recipe?