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Solanum melongena
Growing calendar
Typical timing for central Japan (Kanto region). Shift it for your own climate, and record your actual dates.
Guides
- How to Plant Aubergines: Choosing Plants and Soil Temperature
- Training Aubergines to Three Stems and Keeping Them Cropping
- Cutting Aubergines Back in Midsummer for a Second Crop
- Aubergine Growing Calendar: Planting to the End of the Season
- Aubergine Problems: Wilts, Beetles and Hard, Dull Fruit
- When to Pick Aubergines and Why to Take the First One Early
Common problems
Start from what you can see on the plant.
Pests and diseases (61)
Problems recorded for this plant, most serious first.
Bacterial Wilt
MajorDisease
Leaves wilt while still green during the day and recover in the morning and evening; after a few days of this the plant dies. Cut the stem and stand it in water and a milky white bacterial ooze streams out in threads.
Thrips
MajorPest
Silvery white to brown scarring spreads over leaf and fruit surfaces. Flowers discolor and drop, and fruit is left with keloid-like scar tissue.
Aphids
MajorPest
Small green or black insects cluster on shoot tips and leaf undersides, crinkling the leaves and stopping growth. The honeydew they excrete supports sooty mold that blackens the foliage.
Stone Fruit Disorder of Eggplant
MajorDisorder
Fruit is hard, loses its gloss and stops at a small size without sizing up. Cut it open and almost no seed has formed.
Twenty-eight-spotted Ladybird
MajorPest
The leaf surface is shaved thin, leaving a fine net-like pattern of feeding scars. Heavy feeding browns and kills the leaves and scars the fruit surface as well.
Spider Mites
MajorPest
Fine white stippling spreads across the upper leaf surface, and the leaf eventually whitens and dies back. In heavy infestations fine webbing appears on leaf undersides and shoot tips.
Verticillium Wilt
MajorDisease
Only one side of the lower leaves yellows and wilts, and the symptom moves up the plant. Stem vascular tissue turns pale brown and the plant dies without ever growing well.
Tomato Spotted Wilt
CommonDisease
Brown necrotic spots and ring patterns appear on the leaves and the growing tips shrivel and darken. Fruit develops concentric yellow rings that make it unmarketable.
Helicoverpa Bollworms
CommonPest
Round holes are bored into fruit and buds, the inside eaten out and packed with frass. Rot spreads from the entry hole, leading to fruit and bud drop.
Whiteflies
CommonPest
Shake the plant and a cloud of tiny white insects flies up. Nymphs stay fixed on leaf undersides, and honeydew-fed sooty mold blackens the leaves as the plant weakens.
Southern Blight
CommonDisease
The stem rots at soil level and white silky mycelium spreads over the crown and the surrounding soil surface. Brown sclerotia the size of rapeseed then form and the plant wilts and dies rapidly.
Root-knot Nematode
CommonPest
The plant wilts in the daytime and does not recover with feeding or watering. Pull it up and the roots carry beaded chains of galls of varying size with few fine roots.
Gray Mold
CommonDisease
Water-soaked brown lesions form on flowers, fruit and leaves, densely covered by a fuzzy gray mold. Fruit rots and drops, and decay continues in storage after harvest.
Tobacco Cutworm
CommonPest
Many larvae gather on the leaf underside and graze the tissue away, leaving white skeletonized patches. Once they disperse they cause heavy damage to leaves, pods and fruit.
Curved Fruit
CommonDisorder
Fruit bends into a bow shape or pinches in partway so that it sizes unevenly. When curved fruit increases, overall plant growth is usually slowing too.
Magnesium Deficiency
CommonDisorder
Yellowing appears between the veins of the lower leaves while the veins stay green, giving a net-like pattern. It later browns and dies back, and is most obvious on plants carrying a heavy fruit load.
Brown Leaf Spot
OccasionalDisease
Small light brown to gray-brown spots form on the leaves and enlarge into irregular lesions. When they merge the whole leaf dies and plant vigor drops sharply.
Sooty Mold
OccasionalDisease
A thin black sooty mold spreads over the upper leaf surface, shoots and fruit. It does not invade the tissue itself, but it blocks photosynthesis and badly spoils appearance.
Tobacco Mosaic Virus
OccasionalDisease
New leaves show a clear light-and-dark green mosaic, become wavy and stay small. Growth stalls and fruit fails to size up properly.
Sunscald
OccasionalDisorder
The sun-facing side of the fruit bleaches white to pale yellow, then dries into a sunken leathery patch. Rot organisms enter easily through the damaged tissue.
Powdery Mildew
Disease
White patches appear scattered on the upper leaf surface at first, then the whole leaf is coated in a white powder. Leaves later yellow, brown and die back, and reduced photosynthesis cuts growth and yield.
Late Blight
Disease
Dark green water-soaked lesions appear on the leaves and expand quickly into brown dead tissue. White mold forms on the underside and at the lesion edge, and dark brown lesions spread to stems and fruit.
Sclerotinia Rot
Disease
The crown, stem or head rots in a water-soaked way and is covered in white cottony mycelium. Black sclerotia later form inside and on the surface, and the plant wilts and dies.
Citrus Melanose
Disease
Tiny dark brown specks are scattered over fruit and leaves, sometimes clustering into tear-streaks or a sandpaper texture. Heavy infection makes the rind rough and badly cuts appearance value.
Anthracnose
Disease
Light brown to dark brown round lesions with sharp margins form on leaves and fruit, slightly sunken in the center. In wet weather salmon-pink slimy spore masses ooze out on the lesions.
Tomato Mosaic Virus
Disease
Light and dark mosaic appears on the leaves, which narrow, twist and crinkle. Fruit ripens unevenly and browns internally, cutting both yield and quality.
Damping-off
Disease
The stem pinches in at soil level, turning water-soaked to brown and thin, and the seedling topples over. Infection before emergence makes the stand uneven with missing plants.
Bacterial Soft Rot
Disease
The crown or the head becomes water-soaked and soft, then collapses into a slimy mush. The rotting tissue gives off a distinctive foul odor.
Root-lesion Nematode
Pest
Elongated blackish brown necrotic lesions form on the root surface and fine roots rot away. Above ground the stand is uneven and plants stay small with pale foliage.
Root Rot
Disease
Fine roots rot brown to blackish brown, growth stops and the lower leaves yellow. The plant wilts easily in the daytime and eventually dies outright.
Bacterial Spot
Disease
Small water-soaked spots appear on the leaves, later turning brown with yellowing around them. Fruit develops water-soaked or scabby spots from which rot spreads.
Ring Rot
Disease
The bark of branches and trunk becomes rough and warty, serving as the inoculum source. Fruit develops round brown lesions that soften and rot in concentric rings.
