I still haven't found any thorns on these things - I've been looking, since I remember you mentioning this before. And nothing could be as bad as those kaffir lime plants!
Hmmmmm. maybe yours is a hybrid. Turkey berries here have very visible and mean thorns on the stems. They grow very tall and even when they are cut to the ground they have a habit of growing back.
Happy gardening in Hawaii. Gardens are where people grow.
Yay pepperhead212! My plant with three stems is 6 feet tall now but hasn't bloomed yet. I wonder if I should have pruned it to a single stem? It could be because I planted it in the ground this year -- they need those warm roots? SIP does make a difference, we know.
But this year, I'm seriously thinking of hacking it short and root pruning and overwintering this monster plant, or maybe I should take cuttings and try propagating a smaller version to over winter.
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.
Here is a photo of the plant from a distance. That 18 gal SIP it is planted in gives a size reference. It's easily over 7' tall already, and the main stalk is 1 1/2" thick!
I can see you have the right strategy by placing the SIP next to the porch.
Here are the first flowerbuds on my pea eggplant -- 6 feet+ up in the air.
...I'm gonna need a step-ladder...
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.
That plant of mine has gotten huge in the last couple of weeks, with larger clusters of eggplants than I have ever seen! They obviously like heat, much like many of my hot peppers.
There was a small cluster of 3 or 4, and I am leaving that to totally ripen, and save seeds from. I'm hoping that the seeds germinate faster than the ones I bought, which take 3 weeks or longer.
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.
Hey... Imafan said this is a weed in Hawaii? I have one in front of my front porch that I thought was a volunteer eggplant. It grew really tall and had mean thorns. I cut it down a few times, but it keeps growing back. LOL.
The first fruits are getting round-ish. How do you tell when they are ready to harvest
...also, one of the cuttings I started a while back seems to have rooted. There are new little buds starting to grow from the leaf nodes.
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.
I pick the EPs when they are pretty much all the same size, and have stopped growing. There may be a couple smaller ones, but most will be about three eighths of an inch. I just picked about five more cups, which is pretty much the end for the season. I still have that small cluster I'm keeping for seeds, but they haven't turned color at all - just stayed green. I'll find out how the seeds have developed.
Learning never ends because we can share what we've learned. And in sharing our collective experiences, we gain deeper understanding of what we learned.