Medwyn Williams has had success with aubergines
Forget growing from seed, my grafted plants are the way to go!
When I was growing aubergines for my Chelsea displays I used to sow about four different varieties, which was very challenging, trying to have them ready for mid-May. Nowadays I only grow one variety – ‘Scorpio’ F1 – which I grow from grafted plants from Suttons Seeds.
This year I had nine plants and I potted them into two-litre pots as soon as they arrived and kept them in my glasshouse until I potted them into larger pots. This variety grows at a phenomenal rate and you really need to be moving plants on at regular intervals and into quite large pots as well.
The plants are very robust and are over 1.8m (6ft) in height and tied regularly to 2.4m (8ft) canes that are fanned out. This year we picked our first fruit during early July and I’m expecting a continuous crop through to mid-October, though probably with a smaller amount by then. Initially we grew these for our displays and we had two baskets of them on our Malvern stand this year with the remainder being sold to top end restaurants. Overall we must have harvested around 200 fruits throughout the season.
As an experiment this year I potted them into different-sized pots: 25, 30 and 50 litres in size. The 25 litre pots had two side shoots tied up to canes. The 30 litre pots had three shoots to grow on and the 50 litre pots had four. There was certainly more fruit from the 30 litre pots and what extra we had from the 50 litre pots didn’t really warrant the extra cost of the compost involved.
Next year I’ll grow them all in 30 litre pots using the same mixture, which is one bag John Innes No 3 and one bag Humax Multi-Purpose.
Pests can be a problem, but I use blue and yellow sticky tapes as well as some Coleus canina plants – their pungent smell helps to keep whitefly at bay. As the plants develop, I always remove some leaves from the bottom to make sure there’s adequate air flow.