Tips from Olle Garden Bed: How to Deal With Eggplant Flowers Drying And Falling Off

In the past few years, eggplant has become more and more popular in family gardens. Many gardeners who grow this vegetable are frustrated when the eggplant has flowers but no fruit because the eggplant flowers fall off the plant. The following content also has some reference value for raised garden beds.

This strange looking but delicious vegetable is closely related to tomatoes and belongs to the same family - Solanum family. Many problems and pests that affect tomatoes will also affect eggplants. One of the problems is that eggplant flowers fall off from plants without producing fruits.

When eggplant has flowers but no fruit, this is due to one of two problems. The first cause of eggplant flower abscission is lack of water, and the second is lack of pollination

Eggplant flowers dry due to lack of water

When the eggplant is under pressure, its flowers will dry up and fall off without bearing fruit. The most common cause of eggplant stress is lack of water. Your eggplant needs at least 2 inches (5 cm) of water every week, and more in very hot weather

Most of the water should be provided in one watering, so that the water will go deep into the ground and is unlikely to evaporate quickly. Deep watering can also encourage eggplant to grow deep roots, which helps it find water deeper underground and balance its demand for water, so it is unlikely to drop an eggplant flower.

Eggplant flowers dry due to lack of pollination

Eggplant flowers are usually wind pollinated, which means that it does not rely on insects such as bees and moths for pollination. Pollination problems may occur when the weather conditions are very wet, too wet, or too hot.

When the air is very humid, the water will make the pollen eggplant flowers become very thick, and can not fall on the pistil to pollinate the flowers. When the weather is very hot, the pollen becomes inactive because the plant thinks it cannot support the pressure of additional fruit and hot weather. In a sense, the plant stops the flower so as not to emphasize itself further.

Eggplant flower hand pollination

If you suspect that your eggplant flowers fall off due to lack of pollination, please use artificial pollination. Hand pollination of eggplant flowers is easy to achieve. All you need to do is take a clean small brush and move it inside the eggplant flower. Then repeat the process for all other eggplant flowers, ending with the eggplant flowers you started. This will disperse the pollen.