In order to get a high yield of eggplant in your household plot, you need not to be late with sowing seeds for seedlings, and this must be done until mid-February. With a later sowing, your plants will bloom only at the end of summer, because eggplant is characterized by a long growing season (more than 100 days).
Presowing protection of eggplant seeds from diseases
Before sowing seeds, they must be kept in a strong solution of potassium permanganate for thirty minutes. Then rinse well under a running stream of cold water and moisten with a nutrient solution. To prepare it, you need to dissolve a teaspoon of ash in a liter of water. If there is no ash at hand, then it can be replaced with liquid sodium humate or nitrophos.
In the resulting warm (+28 degrees) solution, the seeds are lowered in gauze bags for a day. Thanks to this processing, eggplant will grow faster, and you will take the first crop much earlier.
After this, the seeds must be removed from the solution, slightly moistened with water, put on a plate and left for 2 days in a warm place. During this time, the seeds will hatch. Now they can be sown in sowing boxes, and after 5 days you will see the first shoots.
Common diseases eggplant seedlings
In order to prevent the inevitable death of the plant, you need to understand the causes of eggplant disease and know its external distinguishing features.
One of the most common diseases affecting plants is the black leg. Its cause is a fungus that causes darkening and wilting of the root neck. If you do not take urgent measures, then this disease will cover the entire plant, and it will fade. In places with high humidity, the disease spreads literally in a matter of hours.
Unfortunately, it is already impossible to cure the plant, but the disease “black leg” is quite possible to prevent.
Eggplant Disease Prevention
The affected plant must be urgently removed along with a small lump of earth, and the soil remaining in this place should be disinfected with a small amount of bleach. Seedlings must be systematically thinned out.
But the most serious are the bacterial diseases of eggplant, which includes “black bacterial spotting”. It affects the entire plant.
At the beginning, isolated black spots appear, with a yellow border on the sides. These spots begin to increase until the whole plant is covered with them. If this happens, then the eggplant fruit can not be eaten. In order to prevent the emergence of this formidable eggplant disease, it is necessary to spray the plants with the special bacterial preparation Zaslon - in a dosage of 3 caps per one liter of water.
In addition to the above diseases, there are others, no less dangerous, and they must always be remembered. These include gray rot, verticillosis and fomospsis.
Eggplant Pests
Probably the most dangerous and gluttonous pest is the Colorado potato beetle. There is nothing tastier for a beetle than a young eggplant plant, and he loves them more than potatoes.
In second place in popularity is the spider mite. He can completely suck out all the juices from the plant, unless, of course, emergency measures are taken. The first wave of the onslaught of the pest is replaced by the second wave, when a new generation of pests is born in a couple of weeks.
Do not mind eating eggplant and aphids. She, like a tick, sucks juices from a plant. To prevent its appearance, it is necessary to spray plants with such preparations as Karbofos and Aktara during flowering. These chemicals are universal and they destroy all pests of eggplant.
In order to destroy naked slugs, it is necessary to keep eggplant plantings clean, from time to time to dust aisles with freshly slaked lime, and, of course, to constantly loosen the soil.