Eggplant should yield an indentation that immediately rises back up when it’s at the height of its flavor and texture. An indentation won’t form if your eggplant is underripe.

Furthermore, the indentation won’t disappear if your eggplant is overripe. An extremely ripe eggplant could even feel mushy to the touch.

How Should the Ideal Time Be Chosen for Collecting Ripe Eggplants?

You’re in for a treat if this is your first time growing eggplant on your own. Before I learned to grow my own and found that eggplants may be tender and even very tasty, I didn’t really care for them.
Once transplanted to your garden, eggplants require 60 to 90 days to reach harvest size (i.e., 90 to 120 days after seed).

These plants are being grown for their tasty fruits (yes, eggplants are fruits—at least in the garden world) and one of the very last stages of a plant’s life cycle is fruit production.

You’ll want to regularly check on your fruits as your plants begin to produce. When they’re still a little young, eggplants are finest picked. In actuality, that’s when they’re at their most soft, delicious, and attractive.

Your fruit may turn bitter and eventually inedible if you leave it too long.

Sign No. 1: It’s Time to Harvest Your Eggplant

The Eggplant’s Skin Is Shiny and Nice

Along with tomatoes and peppers, eggplants belong to the nightshade family. When harvesting fruits from this family, we usually look to the peel for guidance.

Ripe eggplants have shiny, smooth skin. This is the best time to harvest for flavor and texture, even though it’s still technically an immature fruit.

When the skin turns gray, the eggplant is overripe and loses flavor rapidly. You’re way past the best-by date if the skin is already going golden, and that fruit is essentially just suitable for storing the seeds.

 

Indication Number 2: It’s Time to Harvest Your Eggplant

Pressing Causes The Skin To Indent Slightly

Touch the fruit’s side with your finger. An eggplant should be able to leave an indentation that immediately rises back up as it reaches the height of its flavor and texture. You won’t leave an impression if your eggplant is underripe.

Additionally, the indentation will remain if your eggplant is overripe. To the touch, an extremely overripe eggplant could even feel spongy.

 

 

Sign No. 3: It’s Time to Harvest Your Eggplant

Frost is Approaching

As they are completely susceptible to frost, eggplants thrive in warm weather. Harvest all the fruits from your plant and bring them inside if this is your first frost. Out of your garden, remove theplant.
You can still eat the fruits you picked because they are edible even when they are underripe.

 

Harvest Guide for Eggplants

 

How Should Eggplants Be Harvested?

Put on gloves before picking your eggplants since the tiny prickles on the stems can irritate your skin. Cut the stem just above the fruit’s cap, about an inch above, with a clean pair of pruners.

To keep the fruit from decaying after harvest, leave the stem on the fruit.
Although you might be tempted to just tug or twist the fruits free, doing so could break the branch.

The fruits should be carefully placed in your harvest basket because they can bruise easily.Check back in a few days to see if any additional fruits are ready to be picked. Maintaining well-chosen plants can help you reap their benefits in the future.

 

 

After harvest, do eggplants still continue to ripen?

Similar to bell peppers and tomatoes, eggplants can keep maturing even after they are harvested. As cold weather can slow down the ripening process, your best bet may actually be to select underripe eggplants and bring them inside your cozy house if the weather is getting chilly.

Underripe eggplants can be left on your kitchen counter or, for a quicker ripening process, placed in a brown paper bag with a banana. The banana’s ethylene production has the ability to accelerate ripening.

Just remember to check on your eggplant each day. If not, you can wind up with a rotting or overripe eggplant.

 

Learn to Grow as a Gardener Step-by-Step with Leaves, Roots, and Fruit.

 

What Takes Place When Eggplants Are Left to Grow Too Long?

In home gardening, even if the food is considerably smaller than what you’re used to seeing at the grocery store, you’re always better off harvesting it as soon as it starts to show symptoms of being ready.

With eggplants, this is unquestionably the case. When the fruits are still young, harvesting is preferable to missing your ideal harvest window.Two things happen to eggplants that are left to ripen on the plant.

To begin with, you don’t want the plant to spend all of its energy on keeping that mature fruit rather than growing new ones. To ensure that your plants produce for you throughout the growing season, you want to keep them well-chosen.

Secondly, the fruit will change into something you would not want to consume. The taste will turn bitter, the skin will get rougher, and the seeds will get bigger. The fruit is really just useful for preserving your own seeds at this time.

 

 

How to Finish Off Your Whole Eggplant?

Although I’m not much of a cook, I adore simple spaghetti meals that use eggplant.
Here are a few of my favorite methods to finish off big crops of eggplant:

• Saute it.

• Cook eggplant stew with chickpeas and tomatoes.

I recently discovered that salting eggplants prior to cooking them is a good idea, particularly if you’re not a huge lover of the texture or slightly bitter flavor of eggplants. Simply dust an eggplant’s sliced side with salt and allow it to sit there for up to an hour. Fruit becomes less spongy as a result of the salt’s ability to extract some of the moisture.

 

How to Keep Garden Eggplants Stored?

The best way to appreciate homegrown eggplants is to eat them fresh.

Anything you won’t be able to eat within the next few days can be kept in the refrigerator; line the crisper drawer with paper towels to absorb any extra moisture before placing your eggplants inside an open plastic baggie.

A little air movement is what you want for your fruits. In order to avoid bruises, always remember to handle your eggplant carefully. In the following four to five days, savor these.
Should be used within a day or two after being sliced; store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.