djkj, thanks for the link. I am growing black beauty for the first time and appreciates information like this. Hope you have a great garden this year!

Sure, dirtguy! Hope your Black Beauties turn out great! I love Black Beauty because they are so easy to grow, they do have a lot of water content though. But great produce and easy to grow!

I grew Black Beauty last year and it was a beautiful plant, and the fruit was pretty tasty. I also grew Black Egg and was less impressed - I had a ton of fruit but they were rather flavorless. This year, I'm trying Black Beauty, Black Egg (just to give the variety another chance), Florida Highbush, Listada da Granada, and Pingtung. I keep trying to grow Turkish Orange, but haven't been successful, so I'm giving up on that variety.

My favorites are Rosa Biancas, which are lovely Italian heirlooms similar to Listada de Gandias. I grew Listadas last year and was surprised to find they have fierce thorns. Be careful when harvesting! I've also grown pingtung long and ichiban. They are very prolific but I found them to be a little bland. I always grow my eggplants in large containers. They seem to produce a little earlier that way in my climate.

I like Japanese, such as icheban, cause they can just be sliced and thrown on the grill or into some sort of dish!
The big black ones all come ripe at once, and need to be salted and stuff! Also, what do you do with several at once?????? Nancy

I'll add the Rosa Blanca to my list to try.

If I had a lot of eggplant to use, I would make a lot of baba ganouj to use as a spread for bread and dip for veggies. You can also puree cooked eggplant into a lot of pasta dishes. I've made a beef stroganoff with pureed eggplant thrown in and it's amazing.

Nancy-you can pickle eggplants, either with vinegar or fermentation. I made fermented pickles the summer I had a ton and they were my favorite pickles!

I agree with Ohiofem. I find the Japanese types a little too sweet and bland, and the traditional big black ones are of course too reminiscent of gross grocery store eggplant. My favorites are Rosa Bianca and Udumalpet. Both have great eggplant flavour but neither are particularly prolific.

Thanks for the info. Nancy

OK. The topic that I am interested to learn more is FERTILIZING.

Do you fertilize like the guy does in the video ?
I have just used ordinary / all purpose fertilizers in the past and have had pretty good production.

My favorites are Japanese and Chinese slim types. YES, they are sweeter not BITTER. The Ichiban is the most prolific.

I find eggplants to be quite heavy feeders like tomatoes and I fertilize them similarly.

Nice to know everyone is trying to grow different varieties and the opinions about them. I have had great success growing Black Beauty. Yes they do need heavy fertilizing in the growing season. The results are worth it :) I have been using an organic fertilizer with lots of bacteria in it and it seems to provide good amount of soil activity (lots of worms!)