2015 Eggplant Variety Trials

In the hot summer of 2012 we had trouble with our lovely tried and tested favorite eggplant (aubergine) variety, Nadia, setting fruit. That was disappointing, because we had tried lots of different eggplant varieties before settling on Nadia. The large purple-black teardrop or oval eggplant are what is popular here. Not the long thin ones, or the pale lavender ones, or the stripey ones. Nor the smaller open-pollinated ones. We found Nadia and loved it. Then we discovered its Achilles heel – it’s not good in hot summers.

For three years we have trialed some eggplant varieties that we hope will give better yields in hot weather. We chose ones that claimed heat tolerance and were in our “large purple-black teardrop or oval” category. But ironically, we haven’t had hot summers since! I’ve got pretty good data on how the various varieties performed in OK summers.

In 2013 we compared Nadia, Epic, Traviata and the open-pollinated Florida Highbush. We counted the harvested fruit but didn’t weigh them. Traviata gave 7.3 fruits/plant, Florida Highbush 6.3, Nadia 6.1 and Epic only 4.4. We noted that we’d planted the Epic at the dry stony end of the bed, in case that affected yields. As we found out the next year, it certainly did! We also had an impression that Florida Highbush had smaller fruit, but we weren’t sure.

In 2014 we grew the same four varieties and this time we recorded the weight of each harvest as well as the number of fruit of each kind. This time we got better results overall: Nadia gave 13.4 fruits/plant, Epic 12.5, Traviata 11.7 and the Florida Highbush limped home at 6.8 fruits/plant. We failed to note which variety was at the dry stony end that year! We did find out that the size and weight of each fruit was very similar across the varieties, varying only from Epic’s 0.61 lbs to Traviata’s 0.64 lbs per fruit average.

This year we tried the same four varieties and added another reputedly heat-tolerant open-pollinated kind, Florida Market. It’s fruits were smaller and rounder. The variety had a lower yield. It was at the dry stony end (so unfair!) Epic did best, both in number of fruit/plant (10.7) and weight per fruit (0.77 lbs). Good thing we didn’t give up on it after 2013! Traviata provided 8.9 fruits/plant, Florida Highbush 8.2, Nadia only 8.0 (we did get a lot of culls too), and the Florida Market just 7.5.

Overall, it was a less bountiful year compared to 2014, at 812 fruits, 564 lbs – an average of 0.7 lbs each. A lot of eggplant! In 2014 we got more: 927 fruit, 582 lbs – an average of 0.63 lbs each.

What to do next year? Maybe just trial the three hybrids and not the Florida OPs. It would make life easier. Here’s our spreadsheet. I haven’t yet found a tidy way to copy Excel spreadsheets into a blogpost, so if someone knows how, please leave me a message.