Pests and diseases

Possibly because my small garden is relatively secluded and protected from the elements, and because I only use soil and compost purchased from a trusted nursey, my eggplants have been relatively free from attacks from pests and diseases.

However, other growers report that because eggplant has a relatively long growth period, it is more exposed than other vegetable crops to a broad range of plant diseases, pests, nematodes, and weeds.

The most common diseases include bacterial wilt, verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, anthracnose fruit rot, Alternaria rot, damping-off, Phytophthora blight, and fruit rot, leaf spot, little leaf of brinjal, and mosaic (Rotino et al., 1997).

Eggplant is also subject to numerous insect pests, including mites, whiteflies, aphids, eggplant fruit, shoot borer, leafhopper, thrips, spotted beetles, leaf roller, stem borer, and blister beetle (Rotino et al., 1997; Medakker and Vijayaraghavan, 2007).

Unfortunately, in the 2021 / 2 season, my eggplants had a powerful attack from leafhoppers.  I spent an hour picking them off the leaves and then drowned them.I then prayed the plant with neem oil.

I repeated the process for a few weeks, and gradually the numbers declined until they stopped coming.  Fortunately, they confined their activities to the plant's leaves and did not touch the fruit; however, my cucumbers were not so lucky.  I lost my Asley cucumber, but not my English cucumber, which was able to recover from the onslaught.

Drowned leafhoppers

A leafhopper

Plant sprayed with neem oil.