Megabloom

[6sparkpug6]

Hi everyone!

I became familiar with the megabloom last year with my tomatoes (I believe it was black krim). I've seen all sorts of things with megablooms and tomatoes, but I haven't really seen anything similar to my situation.

My eggplant has been having these double blossoms. This is the second one it's gotten. There are some more eggplants on the plant that are the normal, single blossoms though.

But wait. That's not the strangest thing. I found a double male blossom on my pattypan squash (I believe that's the one)! Doesn't it look odd?

So I'm wondering if anybody else has experienced these odd double blossoms on your plants that are not tomatoes and how/why this happens!

Thanks!

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(My first eggplants were more separated than this one.)

[pepperhead212]

I assume that's a Thai eggplant?

I've seen this on squash and tomatoes, but never on eggplant!

[6sparkpug6]

Oh sorry I forgot to include the type. It's a patio baby.

[6sparkpug6]

Here are the pictures so you don't have to go to another page.

[6sparkpug6]

Anyone? I'm starting to think that it might be the environment -- I found another on a pumpkin! and a triple on the same eggplant

[applestar]

I had quite a few doubles on different squash -- both male and female -- last year. First time seeing it on eggplant, though have seen them on tomatoes of course ...and peppers so that makes sense.

I don't really know if this is environmental. It could be genetic tendency too since giant tomato growers counts on extreme mega blooms to produce the impossibly large, contorted, hefty fruits... And they carefully save seeds and name them according to grower and weight of the fruit.

I did wonder about mutation too since I also had an outbreak of blind terminal growth seedlings. Spent some time digging up radioactive cloud tracking data from the disaster in Japan, Effect of X-Ray and irradiation of mail, etc. ...but decided not to think about that sort of thing too much...

Last year's world record tomato was grown in a high tunnel in the heat of the summer and there have been some speculation by giant tomato growers regarding possible effect of the high heat and humidity just skirting the fruit setting failure threshold, etc.

[6sparkpug6]

Oh interesting. I saw another on the pattypan (and yes, it's a confirmed pattypan at this point). I have a really giant flower on my eggplant grown from seed, but it may just be exceptionally big... We'll just have to wait and see!

Next year, I might try to keep track of the conditions more to see if there is any association between the megablooms and weather.