White Italian (Rumi) Eggplant Seeds

The White Italian (Rumi) eggplant stands apart from the common deep-purple types with its smooth, ivory-white skin and rounded, egg-like shape that gives the whole plant an ornamental look in the garden. Its flesh is pale, dense and remarkably creamy, with a mild, gently sweet flavour and far less of the bitterness you find in darker varieties. Because the firm flesh holds its shape so well, it is a favourite for grilling, roasting, frying and stuffing, soaking up oil and spices into a silky, tender texture that suits classic Egyptian and Mediterranean dishes alike.

Planting

Eggplant is a warm-season, frost-sensitive crop, so start your seeds indoors roughly 6 to 8 weeks before you plan to move them outside. Sow each seed about 0.6 cm deep, covering it only lightly. Keep the soil warm at 27-32°C until the seedlings break through, then ease it back to around 21°C; the seed simply will not sprout in cool soil. At that warmth germination usually takes about 7 to 14 days. Wait to transplant outdoors until nighttime lows stay reliably above 10°C and the soil has warmed to roughly 18-21°C. Set the young plants about 45 cm apart, in rows spaced 75-90 cm apart (allow 45-60 cm between plants when growing two rows on plastic mulch). Choose your sunniest spot: eggplant needs full sun, at least 6 hours of direct light a day and ideally 8 to 10 hours for the best fruiting.

Fertilizing

Before transplanting, work a balanced complete fertilizer such as 10-10-10 or 13-13-13 into the soil at roughly 145-160 g per square metre, adjusting phosphorus and potassium to match a soil test, and keep the soil pH between 6.0 and 7.0. Once the first fruits have formed, side-dress with nitrogen, then feed again after the first harvest. Go easy on nitrogen overall, since too much pushes the plant into bushy, leafy growth that is slow to set fruit.

Care

Give your plants about 2.5-5 cm of water each week; whenever rainfall falls short of 2.5 cm, soak the bed thoroughly at least once a week down to about 15 cm deep. A drip system or soaker hose delivers the most even moisture. When seedlings show their true leaves, thin or transplant them to stand 5-8 cm apart, or pot them into individual 5-8 cm pots, and harden them off by cutting back water and lowering the temperature to about 16°C for roughly a week before planting out; move them on a cloudy, calm day or in the late afternoon. Watch for flea beetles (look for tiny pinholes in the leaves), Colorado potato beetle, eggplant lacebug, spider mites and cutworms; the main diseases are Verticillium wilt and early blight, so rotate away from all Solanaceae such as potato, tomato and pepper for 4 to 5 years. Harvest while the fruit is still glossy and firm, at about two-thirds of its full size; press the side with a thumbnail and if the dent stays, it is ready. Dull skin and browned seeds mean it has gone past its best, so cut the stem cleanly with pruners or a sharp knife rather than pulling. Counting from transplanting, fruit is usually ready in roughly 55 to 80 days.