Heat-Tolerant Eggplant Trials
Summers are hot in central Virginia, where I garden at Twin Oaks Community. Because we feed as many as 100 people from our gardens, it’s important that we grow reliable cultivars that’ll do well in our intense summers. Over the past few years, I’ve been trialing a number of eggplant cultivars to see which performed best in heat. I kept accurate, detailed records throughout the trials, and what follows are the results. You may find them useful when deciding what to grow in your own plot.
Origins of the Trials
Long ago, the gardeners at Twin Oaks grew the hybrid ‘Dusky’ eggplant, which bears a classic oval, dark-purple, 6- to 7-inch fruit. The 24-inch-high plants are fairly short and are lower-yielding than some bigger types. We grew 270 to 325 row feet of ‘Dusky’
