EGGPLANTS
Are very tender when small, so they should be started in the warmest part of the hotbed, or in a warm, sunny window in flats. When they have grown their first pair of true leaves they should be transplanted—if at all crowded, into other flats or other rows in the hotbed, setting them two inches apart each way and grown on, given sufficient water and occasional cultivation, but not sufficient to disturb the roots, until time to plant out in the open ground; this should not be done until the nights and soil are warm as a check at this time will mean a late setting of fruit.
Eggplants are considered one of the difficult things to grow; personally I have seldom lost a plant except at the hands, or mouth rather, of cutworms, but I have frequently gotten an unsatisfactory setting of fruit. However, one must have certain standards to adhere to in their culture, the first of which is heat in all the early stages of their growth, the second, rich soil, with occasional supplementary dressings of nitrate of soda, and thorough cultivation.
The plants require considerable room when mature and should not be set closer than three feet each way.
The principal enemy of the eggplant is the potato beetle which is quite as partial to egg plants as to potatoes. Spraying with Paris green or arsenate of lead is effectual before the fruit has formed but hand picking is more satisfactory and where only a few plants are grown for family use, quite as practical. It is not the mature beetle that eats the leaves but the young beetles that hatch from the mass of yellow eggs laid on the under side of the leaves, so at the first appearance of the old bugs search should be made for the mass of eggs and these as well as the parent beetle destroyed; by this means no beetles can get a start. It is always good practice to avoid, as far as possible, the use of poisonous insecticides in the kitchen garden; while their use may do no harm on vegetables that have not set their fruit, there is always a tendency to grow careless in their use and to continue it after the safety zone has been passed.
New York eggplant is the standard variety for all but the northern states; it is of the highest type, spineless and of a rich, purple color, large and borne in abundance; it is not as early as Black Beauty, long a favorably known sort, which is about twelve days earlier; Very Early Dwarf Purple is still earlier and Black Pekin is another good sort. In the northern states the earliest variety should be planted, but the eggplant has one remarkable characteristic—for a plant so tender in its early stages it seems, when fully grown, almost immune to cold and early frost, and I have often gathered unharmed fruit after severe frost had cut most everything else in the garden. Throwing some loose stuff—clover hay, corn fodder or weeds—over the plants on a cold night will usually save them and a spell of warm weather that usually follows the first hard frosts may bring on immature fruit to a usable size. It requires about five months from the sowing of the seed to produce usable fruit so it will readily be seen that it is important to start the seed in the hotbed, greenhouse or in the house and to take every precaution to grow them on rapidly without any check.
OKRA
So well and favorably known in the southern states, is practically unknown in the north, except as its acquaintance is made in the chicken gumbo of the commercial soups and a few other vegetable and meat preparations. It should, however, form a staple vegetable of the kitchen garden and, once its merits are known, would, doubtless, become as popular north as it is south. Though its use is chiefly associated with the preparation of soup it has other, equally acceptable, uses. It is an excellent addition to hash, adding both richness and flavor; added to tomatoes it imparts a fuller, richer flavor and used alone, fried, is excellent. A small amount of meat, with the addition of potatoes, okra and onion, the last two fried tender before adding the meat and potatoes, makes a most satisfying one-dish meal.
It is one of the easiest vegetables to grow, requiring the same culture as corn; making the rows three feet apart, and planting the seed in drills and thinning to ten inches apart in the row. Perkin's Long Pod is the best general variety and the pods should be gathered when half grown, whether needed or not, to prevent checking the production.