The brinjal plants were bought as saplings from the weekend market. I did not hope much for them then,as from my experience harvesting a brinjal purely depend on the presence of natural pollinators in your area which is a huge miss in our side.
The plants were nurtured and maintained and cared for alright but the expectation was very less all along. There were only 3 plants and all of them flowered around the same time .. when they flowered I tried to hand pollinate but none took off. We let them be ..
So one day I was very surprised to see something hanging like a brinjal in the place of the remains of a flower and almost screamed. We were euphoric thanking the stranger bee that did the task.The lone brinjal was harvested just a week after that but we realized it was way too early when we cut it. It had not even seeded but taste guaranteed the quality of the vegetable.
The next one formed not soon after that and this time we left it in the plant for more days and harvested it just this week. It was way big and bulky but still tender. I suspect this would not have seeded either.
We have two more brinjals forming and hope this is just the start of the season.
Watch out for the thorn in that flower..This variety brinjal has around two to three thorns in the green cap. When I asked my mom about this, she explained that this is the original heirloom variety that my parents,when they were young,used to see them very commonly sold in the markets. This variety has become very rare since the recent decades and the advent of the hybrid varieties.I am so happy that by some luck we ended with a mullu kathirikai.
