Get your garden summer-ready with easy-to-follow tips for beginner gardeners. This section breaks down the basics for a range of sun-loving veggies.
Most of us have short seasons and need to start our eggplants indoors or buy them as seedlings from the nursery. By the time the soil is warm enough for transplanting, eggplants are already mature, tall plants. Some even set flowers at this point. So what’s the best way of transplanting them? Do we bury them deep, like tomatoes, or do we keep the soil line where it is?
If you’re growing pepper plants from seed for the first time, you’ve embarked on a long journey. It can take up to 12 weeks of dedicated care and attention until you’ll be able to transplant your seedlings outside. In the meantime, a lot of things can happen to your plants.
When I first tried growing eggplants (or aubergines) in my area under the mountains (zone 6B), they didn’t do so well. They were growing outdoors, and during the heat of summer, they kept dropping their flowers. I thought they’d never set fruit. But come autumn, they started producing tender and tasty fruits that soon fueled my eggplant obsession. I was now on a mission to troubleshoot my eggplant growing process.