Growing vegetables in your backyard or pot is easy. But, I don’t agree.
When you aren’t aware of its growing requirements it’s damn tough and nearly impossible to get the best yield.
Are you planning to grow eggplants in backyard?
First thing, know eggplant water requirements.
Because, water, sunlight and soil are basic essential elements that as a gardener you must provide your plant.
In some cases, you can grow plants without adding fertilizers, but cannot grow without water. (Source)
In this write-up, I’ll discuss about watering needs of this vegetable plant.
Eggplant needs 1 inch of water every week to stay moist and produce yield. Depending on your climatic conditions, you must increase or decrease watering frequency.
What is 1 inch watering?
This plant need 1 inch of water per square feet. Depending on the ground or raised bed in which you’re growing eggplant measure the gallons of water your plant needs.
Let’s say you must water 1 square foot of garden, based on online measuring tool you may need 2.36 liters of water.
If you want to get into Maths, check the detailed article here.
How Much Water Does Eggplant Need?
Most gardeners don’t like to calculate, for those who are looking for a simpler version.
You can’t get a one liner answer.
There are several factors that should be considered before determining the amount of water, which I’ll discuss in next section.
Insert your finger in the soil to ensure it is moist. If the soil is moist enough it will be sticky. You don’t have to water when the soil has enough moisture.
If the soil is dry or has low moisture, then water generously at the base of the plant.
Also Read: Will Eggplant Survive the Winter?
How Often to Water Eggplant?
If you want to grow a perfect eggplant with rich nutrients, they require watering on a schedule.
Eggplant devours plenty of water, specifically during ripening time.
This vegetable can be associated with the nightshade clan like tomatoes, green pepper, and potatoes.
More water they will get, the more excellent the quality of taste you will get.
Eggplant’s size also depends on the water quantity they get. You must water them on schedule to get the perfect size of the eggplant.
This plant grows in warm weather and gets decreases in cool weather that requires moist soils.
You must consider climatic conditions in your region before setting watering frequency.
Consider these factors while watering eggplant
Temperature, plant location, growing medium and plant variety can impact the watering schedule.
Also Read: How Many Garlic Grow from One Bulb?
Climatic in your region
In tropical regions, where the water gets easily evaporated into atmosphere, you must water frequently to keep the soil moist. Else, your eggplant may experience underwatering issue.
In colder regions, you must reduce watering frequency. Else, you may end-up overwatering your eggplant.
Soil – Important Factor
Growing medium or soil in which you planted eggplant must be well-drained, fertile and sandy.
This will ensure to drain excess water from the pot.
Clay soil that clogs water can result in overwatered eggplant and rot roots.
Similarly, soil that fails to retain moisture will result in underwatered plant.
Besides watering the plant, make sure the soil is significant; as fertile soil is crucial for perfect eggplant. If they get soggy, the roots of the eggplant will start to get rotten. They need moist soil to develop ideally.
Also Read: Why Are My Eggplant Flowers Falling Off?
Plant Location
Suppose you like to plant your eggplant in an indoor pot setting and growers to get more giant urns with a drainage system underneath.
It would enable the extra water to sift handily. Again, we recommend you utilize flexible or plastic pots for this vegetable plant.
Suppose we think about environmental protection. We significantly prevent plastic, but these plastic pots would assist the soil to have moisture. Also, they are solid and durable.
And if you use an earthen pot, it’s also good, but the earthen urn absorbs the humidity of the soil. Moreover, they are heavier than plastic urns that are easier to move.
If you plant this vegetable in an outdoors setting, you can water them as directly as the surface looks parch or dry. There are various manners in which eggplant can be rinsed and looked after.
Moreover, these climate conditions require getting into thought as generously. These vegetable plants don’t grow excellently in cool weather.
Therefore, you would need to wait for the hot temperature to produce them.
It entirely depends on the producer on how they would prefer to grow their eggplant. They can choose to the root or seed to grow their eggplant at the house or by purchasing saplings accessible at shops around the country.
Receiving saplings is a more straightforward choice because these eggplants can be slightly selective, rendering them further hard to cultivate from seed.
Also Read: How to Pollinate Eggplants?
Sunlight
Eggplants need 6 hours of direct sunlight to grow and thrive.
Along with water, eggplant needs sunrays to produce its food. But due to rising temperature moisture in the soil can evaporate into atmosphere in no time.
To combat, you must increase watering frequency and mulch around the plant to avoid easy escape of moisture.
How and When Do Eggplants Required to be Watered?
Initially, watering the eggplant rely on the pot location.
Consider you are thinking about planting eggplant in an indoor location. If you can’t do this, you can use a moisture meter that can be handily available at your nearest store.
You can get this meter from an online commerce website or at the shopping store. To check the amount of moisture, you need to stick this meter in the soil. By using this, you can quickly come to know that when they need water.
For outdoor set eggplant, you need to give a little bit of attention to the climate conditions before watering. The first and the important thing is that eggplant prefers warm temperatures to grow. And it would help if you waited for the hot weather to produce them.
You can water them frequently in hot weather as eggplants require more water to grow correctly and little water in cold temperatures.
Eggplants require regular watering. They need watering slightly more in hot weather and less in cold weather.
Sunlight also plays an essential role in the growth of a plant.
So when it gets hotter, this plant requires more watering as the sun evaporates the water quickly.
Also Read: 13 Easy Vegetables to Grow All Year Round
Maximum people use various methods to keep the moisture in the soil.
Mulching is one of them. It’s a kind of insulation, and in this process, you need to cover the surface with a plastic layer, but you also need to pay attention so that the plant can breathe adequately.
In addition, this technique enables the expansion of the time between the watering sessions.
Using this method, you don’t need to give water again and again in a hot climate because the soil’s moisture gets trapped.
The perfect time to water the eggplant is early morning and evening. However, you can give water in the early morning and the evening time.
So, they have sufficient time to absorb the water and get moisture before the sunlight comes off.
Experts recommend that it’s suitable and sufficient to water eggplant plants in the early daybreak so that the extra water on layers can vaporize during the noontime, decreasing the possibilities of diseases and fungus.
Also Read: Eggplant Leaves Turning Yellow & Curling
Under Watering Eggplants
Eggplants require more water to grow. They need precisely 1-inch per week, and it’s better to water them often because continually watering provides them moisture to the bottom roots.
Overwatering Eggplant
By overwatering eggplants, they can die. The roots of the eggplant can perish or decay. It averts plants from absorbing water and drying out. Under-watered eggplants also dehydrate and evolve inadequately.
Try not to over-watered eggplant plants as this can become a reason for disease or fungus.
You need to provide them with short, frequent watering that can help you to make your eggplant plants grow quickly and effectively. Also, this enables the shallow roots to get moisture.
How Much Water Does Eggplant Need in Pots?
Water is essential to growing eggplant effectively. They expect more water to develop appropriately.
Therefore, provide them water on a regular schedule. Make sure that the eggplant plant’s soil must be moist.
Otherwise, your eggplant plats can get dry out. Additionally, check your pot with a drain hole to sift the water through this before planting.
Plastic pots are suitable for eggplant plants as they are more competitive than earthen pots.
Also Read: Why Are My Pepper Plant Leaves Wrinkled?
Eggplant Caring Tips
Choose the variety
There are many varieties of eggplants such as white eggplant, fairy tale, green eggplant, Indian Eggplant, Italian, Japanese, etc. Fairy Tale or the Indian eggplant is best for you if you like the most admirable tasting variety.
Seed planting
Eggplant grows best in warm weather. Therefore, the best time to plant seeds is when the soil temperature is around 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. You can either plant the seed directly into the main pot or in the ground.
In any, the depth of planting should not be more than 5-10 mm. They generally germinate in one or two weeks.
Choose pots or fabric bags
You can opt for a sturdy plastic pot, earthen pot, or clay pot. You can also eggplant in fabric grow bags, particularly if you want to grow them on the terrace.
These fabric bags follow the principles of air pruning which is so helpful to the root system.
Before planting check the pot that there are lots of drainages holes at the lower of the pot.
If possible, choose a black pot as black bodies are sound good absorbers of heat and do well in warm temperatures. And if you are going in the ground, better eggplant plants in raised beds for best results.
Potting Soil
Well-drained soil is significant for good root growth. A powerful root system would produce more muscular and healthier shoots and yield a better harvest.
Sunlight and location
Whether you are planning for planting eggplant on a terrace or balcony or in a backyard, location is significant as they require direct full sunlight for At least 6 hours for best results. Also, avoid chemical pesticides, which can drive away or even kill the beneficial insects.
Watering
It is a significant factor as they give a steady moisture supply but don’t let the soil soggy. If you are not watering correctly, this can result in fruit drop-off, low quality, small size fruit, or tasting bitter fruit.
Daily watering is a general rule, and you should not worry about overwatering the soil as you have adequate draining holes. You can make it a habit of watering profoundly and thoroughly so that the entire root system gets drenched with water and then the excess water comes out of the drainage holes.
Conclusion
How much water does eggplant needs to grow depends on various factors, climatic condition, temperature and soil.
Like most vegetable plants, eggplant needs the soil to be moist most of the time. You can achieve this by choosing well-drained fertile soil that successfully retains moisture.
Avoid overwatering or underwatering your plant.
In other countries, eggplants are also called brinjals. It provides lots of benefits as they are rich in nutrients and high in antioxidants. Also, decrease the chances of heart disease.
Furthermore, eggplants are highly versatile and fit nicely in varied dishes. So if you want to produce a perfect eggplant with good taste, give them water on time and take care of them to get healthier eggplant.