Gadenin日本語Get the appWhat to watch for changes month by month
Aubergine problems arrive in a predictable order, so a short weekly look at the right thing finds them far sooner than a general worry about everything.
| Stage | Watch for | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Early season | Aphids, cutworms | New shoots, the stem at soil level |
| Wet weather | Verticillium wilt, powdery mildew | Lower leaves, yellowing on one side only |
| Peak heat | Bacterial wilt, mites, thrips | Midday wilting, leaf undersides, inside flowers |
| Late season | Leaf beetles, fruit damage | Grazed leaves, the fruit surface |
Twice a week, in the cool of the morning, turning a few leaves over is enough. Found early, most of these are dealt with by hand.
Soil-borne disease is decided before you plant
The wilts that kill a whole plant come from the soil, and no spray reaches them. Rotation and a grafted plant are the two things that actually work, and both are decisions made before planting.
| Symptom | Suspect | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Wilts by day, recovers by morning, repeatedly | Bacterial wilt | Lift the whole plant and take it off the plot. It will not recover |
| Leaves yellow on one side of the plant | Verticillium wilt | Pull it before it spreads. Rotate and graft next year |
| Lower leaves yellow, the whole plant wilts | Root damage or wilt | Check the roots for galls first |
| Knobbly swellings on the roots | Root knot nematodes | Change the site and grow a break crop |
Do not stack pulled plants at the edge of the plot or dig them in. Burn them or put them in the household waste.
Keep the pests out rather than chasing them
Aphids matter less for the sap they take than for the virus they carry, and beetles do their real damage while the plant is small. Both are far easier to exclude early than to control later.
Reflective mulch reduces aphid arrivals, and covering young plants until they are established keeps beetles off the growing point. Once the plant is large, hand picking on a cool morning deals with most of what is left.
Hard fruit and dull fruit are neither pest nor disease
The most common aubergine complaints are physiological. Fruit that stays small and hard, or has lost its shine, is telling you about pollination, feeding or water rather than about an organism.
| What the fruit does | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Stays small and hard | Poor pollination, cold and low light | Feed and thin fruit to restore vigor |
| More flowers with short styles | Short of food, plant running down | Feed. Over half of them means cut back |
| Surface dull rather than glossy | Not enough water in the soil | Water more and add mulch |
| Brown scratched patches on the shoulder | Thrips feeding | Check inside the flowers and lay reflective mulch |
The proportion of short styled flowers is the most useful single indicator. Once more than half are like that, feeding alone rarely recovers it and cutting back is quicker.
Making prevention a single design
Rotate at least three years away from other nightshades, use grafted plants where you cannot, keep the spacing, strip the lower leaves, and mulch. Together those remove most of the conditions the problems need, and they are all decided at or before planting.
If you use a spray
Spraying into dense growth does not work. Strip the lower leaves and open the plant first so the spray reaches leaf undersides. Choose a product approved for aubergines where you live and follow the label on intervals and the number of applications.
At garden scale, walking the plants more often is cheaper than spraying and gives more consistent results.