How to Care for Your Eggplant Tree for Fruitful and Profitable Harvest

Eggplant or aubergine is a plant under solonaceae. It is widely farmed in Indonesia. This plant is pretty easy to farm, ergo, it is one of the most popular options in horticulture farming.

For a most fruitful and profitable harvest that you want for your eggplant crops, here are several things you cannot afford to forget:

1. Watering

Your eggplant crop needs intensive watering. You also want to make sure you use clean, pollution free water for your crop.

Ideally, this watering happens twice a day if your farmland has dry soil due to elongated dry season. If your farmland has humid enough soil with good water accumulation, watering can happen only once a day.

Watering also affects plants’ physiology process especially in cell growth, cell elongation, and adding cell volumes in meristematic areas like root tips and stem tips, and controlling turgor pressure. Water also acts as a natural solvent and it helps the physiology process during seed germination.

2. Harrowing and Weeding

Harrowing is done to achieve finer, looser soil for your planting medium. Finer soil makes for easier absorbance of nutrients and water in the soil into plants’ roots.

Weeding is something you do to make sure your farmland is free from weed that can disturb your eggplant crop’s growth and development. Weeding can be done by using small hoes to dig weeds out and get rid of them from their roots.

3. Fertilization

Your eggplant crop needs enough nutrients for it to grow well. Nutrients are basically your plant’s food that helps it grow. Not enough food in human will cause body to go weak or even die. Same thing can happen to plants.

Fertilization for your eggplant crop during its first stage of seeding is best done using organic fertilizer from cattle manure, for example. When your eggplant crop is old enough, then they will be ready for non-organic fertilizer like KCL, urea, pearl NPK, phonska, etc. Those are the best fertilizers for eggplant crop, from my experience.

4. Pest and Disease Control

Every horticulture crop is in danger from pest and disease attack. Not preventing this as well as you can will result in a fatal failure of your farming.

Pests that often attack eggplant crops are rotting, ladybugs, leafhoppers, caterpillars, armyworms, etc. Meanwhile, diseases that often attack vary from ones caused by parasitical fungus, pathogenic bacteria, to other parasitical microorganisms activities.

Pest and disease control can be done by making sure your crop land and environment is clean and free from weed. Weeds, other than being able to steal soil’s nutrients, are the perfect, strategic place for pests to lay eggs and grow. As a last resort, if things seem to go out of hand, you can use pesticides in correct dosages.

Now, make sure to be patient and diligent in taking care of your eggplant crops and you will be ready for very fruitful and profitable harvest soon enough. Happy gardening! Read more: Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Produksi Gas Etilen (Hormon Tumbuhan).