How to plant eggplant seedlings

Eggplant, among the nightshades, is the most heat-loving. But, despite their capriciousness and love for elevated temperatures, eggplants are in constant demand not only in oriental bazaars. The thing is that eggplant fruits not only allow you to prepare a huge number of delicious dishes, but also contain many vitamins, minerals, potassium salts and copper. In its homeland, eggplant is often called the “vegetable of longevity” because it helps normalize cardiac activity, promotes the removal of excess fluid, normalizes water-salt metabolism and rids the body of uric acid salts. Therefore, the question: how to plant eggplants arises for almost every gardener.

TIMELINES FOR SOwing SEEDS
From the moment of germination to flowering, eggplant usually takes about 100 days. This means that you can achieve an early harvest only by planting seedlings. And in this case, in addition to knowing how to plant eggplants in the garden, you need to know when to do it. There are several methods for growing eggplant seedlings.

According to the first, seeds must be sown for seedlings 2-2.5 months before planting the eggplant in a permanent place. Therefore, it is necessary to plant eggplants in the garden before the seeds of peppers and tomatoes—in early February.

Another technique advises taking into account the unpredictability of our climate: in severe frosts, seedlings can die even on an insulated windowsill, dry out from overheated room air, or simply stretch out too much from a lack of daylight.Based on all this, it is recommended to sow seeds for seedlings in mid-March, and after the emergence of seedlings, artificially “illuminate” them with fluorescent lamps for a month. Lamps are selected at 40 or 80 watts, and are fixed horizontally at a distance of about 8-10 cm above the plants. The backlight turns on from 8 am to 8 pm. This will allow you to get stronger seedlings, which in all respects will outperform seedlings sown much earlier.