A recent post described the difficulty that veggie gardeners encounter as they attempt to note the differences between closely related vegetable crops such as collard greens and cauliflowers.
Well judging by the following e-mail I just may add eggplants to the list of confused, though unrelated vegetable crops…
Growing a Rather Unusual Crop of Eggplants in Indonesia
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I just wanted to share some of the heirloom eggplants that I’m growing and harvesting from the vegetable garden this summer. Previous articles covered tips for growing eggplants and discussed the international roots of heirloom eggplant varieties.

As a follow up to the recent posts on Growing Eggplants and Controlling Flea Beetles on Eggplants, I wanted to share a few rare and unusual varieties of heirloom eggplants that are available to the home gardener. Do a little research and you’ll quickly discover that eggplants are well traveled and a very international vegetable. There are many exotic varieties hailing from remote regions of Turkey, Africa, Italy, Thailand, India, China, the Ukraine, and Louisiana.

One thing that has always been a constant for me is that if I plant a single eggplant, flea beetles are guaranteed to make an appearance. For some reason these difficult to control pests are especially fond of eggplants and if left unattended will quickly chew hundreds of holes through the plant’s leaves.

Eggplants are one of my favorite vegetables to grow in the garden which is strange considering that I refused to eat them as a kid. Now I love eggplants in and out of the garden. There are about twenty plants of a dozen different varieties of heirloom eggplants growing in my garden this season.