Aubergines!
Well, not aubergines plural, but definitely one aubergine is well on its way. I wrote last month that a ruptured Achillies tendon keeps me from maintaining a large vegetable garden anymore. So, I’m experimenting with square-foot-gardening in galvanised troughs.
I started the seeds in January and February, keeping them on a south-facing window ledge during the day and bringing them in at night. They were planted in the troughs three or four weeks ago. A lot of work, but hopefully the pay off will be early vegetables.
Because of the reduced space, I only have three plants, but I’m excited to see how many aubergines I get from them using this intensive method. Twenty-four over the season would an excellent result.
Because this is an experiment, I only have two troughs. One is dedicated to plants in the nightshade family: tomatoes, peppers, and aubergines, with onions, cilantro, and basil tucked in here and there.
The other trough has lettuce, Bok choy, broccoli, carrots, spinach, radishes, pole beans and cucumbers which I hope will cascade over the side of the trough. Most of these plants don’t require bee pollination, so I have netting to keep insects out.
There’s still time to start a container vegetable garden if you are inspired. It’s a bit too late for seeds, but the markets and nurseries are full of small plants. When I first arrived on the island, they only sold a few bog-standard varieties. Now, they offer real variety, including rare heirlooms.
Be sure to choose large pots for your babies, much bigger than you probably think. A single tomato plant needs a pot of at least twenty-seven litres or forty centimetres tall. Vegetable plants are greedy feeders. They need to be to produce so many fruit in such a short time. Â
Bugs Galore.
2026 is shaping up to be a bumper year for our six-legged frenemies. The last generation of insects hides away and overwinters either as pregnant females or larvae. Cold snaps reduce the number of insects. To make matters worse, a warm wet spring has made the problem even worse. This leads numbers to increase, year on year.
Currently, the island is seeing excess numbers of aphids and other leaf-eating beetles. If your garden is infested, it would be a mistake to break out the chemicals. Yes, pesticides kill the harmful insects, but they also kill the beneficial ones. Not only that, but they kill birds, other wild-life, and can cause disease in pets and humans. Spraying chemicals will temporarily sterilise your garden, but the bad guys will soon be back. This time, there will be no beneficial insects to keep them in check. You will have created a cycle of nasty chemical spraying.
For soft-bodied sucking insects like tiny black fly and greenfly, spray with a tablespoon of Fairy or Castile soap mixed in a litre of water. Spray both sides of leaves and stems. Repeat every 4 days until they’re gone. Fairy dissolves the coating on their bodies, and they dehydrate to death.
Fairy will not work on hard-bodied insects of which there are many. My great nemesis is the red insect with black spots in the photos. Many gardeners mistake these for ladybirds (ladybug if you are from the US). Ladybirds are round. This destructive monster is elongated.
I use Neem oil, a natural extract from trees found in India. Neem is harmless to beneficial insects, wildlife, and humans. Leaves are coated with it, top and bottom. If an insect eats the leaf, it will lose the will to eat and mate. The eggs and larvae will die right away, but you won’t immediately see insects dropping dead. It’s a gradual process. If you have an infestation, spray every 4-7 days, probably three times, to get control of the situation. You can also pick the adults off by hand to speed up the process. Neem can be used as a preventative too. For this, simply spray every 14-21 days during the growing season.
Follow the recipe on the Neem container, as the strength varies depending on the product you buy. I also mix in Potassium Bicarbonate to the spray. This is a natural fungicide, that is quite miraculous against all sorts of fungal diseases.
Next time I’ll talk about our other great nemesis—Mosquitos. Until then, happy spraying.
Fern Penrose
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