kieranblakewriter

My eggplant looks a little sickly – I think.

It continues to grow in the no dig garden bed, but the leaves have taken on a brown colour and are looking withered. This only started happening recently.

The stem of the plant looks healthy, to me, and the plant continues to grow taller, but I’m worried about the leaves. Does this suggest a lack of nutrients, are the nutrients from the soil not reaching all the way up to the leaves?

I’m wondering whether the previously healthy eggplant is suffering from the competition in the garden bed. I planted three lots of corn seeds in the same, fairly small garden bed, which I call the fortress. The corn is growing very well and very rapidly.

The fortress is a garden bed constructed of imposing, solid, impenetrable paving stones and guarded by the fearsome Ben the Beserker. I asked Ben if he’d seen any suspicious activity which would explain the current condition of the eggplant, but he shot me a disgruntled look and complained about having to guard the fortress in 30 degree heat day after day. He claimed that was an unfair working conditions for someone who grew up among the fjords of Scandanavia.

I reminded Ben that he knew of the conditions when he signed up for the job – although he didn’t actually sign up for the job, I just put him there and continue to exploit him, just like an authoritarian ruler or a member of a royal family.

Then I returned to the real dilemma, the state of the eggplant.

I think there may be too many plants competing for the nutrients from the soil, so I recently added some seaweed to the garden bed, as nutrient rich mulch. I collected it from the nearby beach, soaked it for a while in clean water then placed it around the plants. I’ll collect some more today when I go for a swim (it’s stinking hot here today – no wonder Ben’s complaining)

I’ll also use the juice from the soaked seaweed as further fertiliser in the future, and see if this saves my eggplant.

Meanwhile, maybe I should take Ben an ice-block.