How and When to Harvest Eggplants

The last time I posted about my eggplants, they were just tiny cute eggplant seedlings. I planted them together with my tomatoes and they ended up thriving more. I think right now, I have more than 10 pots of eggplant and not only have they started bearing fruits weeks ago, but those that first did have already grown their fruits so much that I already harvested one of them.

So how do you know when your eggplant is ready to be harvested? Here are some guidelines:

• SIZE: You don't have to wait for your eggplants to grow very, very big or to reach full maturity. You can pick them up early to encourage your plant to grow more and extend its growing season. To be more specific, you can pick them up once they're bigger than your hand. If you let them grow some more, they might already brown and won't be of any use anymore to your culinary exercises.
• SHINE: Once your eggplant exhibits a nice reflective sheen to it, then you can pick them up.

How do you harvest your eggplant?

• The stem can be quite tough and some varieties have thorns so use a glove and a pair of sharp shears or scissors.
• Don't even try to just use your hands to pull it off the stem coz you might just end up hurting the entire plant.

There are so many types of eggplants around. For a more comprehensive list, go to this link: Eggplant Types

As for me, looking at how my eggplants look like, I ended up growing two types (it could be more depending on how my other eggplants will look like weeks from now) :

Black Beauty type of Eggplant - the color is dark violet and has been looking shiny and ripe for a few weeks now. I let them grow some more, just a little bigger than my hand, before I decided to harvest one just a few minutes ago. It's shiny, smooth and firm to touch. 

Egg type of Eggplant - I think have more of these type. They're still greenish and not shiny yet. So until they exhibit a nice reflective sheen, then that's the time I'll harvest them.

Happy eggplant harvest!