Larry, Blissful, I love eggplant, and through the years I've grown almost 40 varieties, with only 3 keepers! The ones in bold are the ones I grow every year - Hari (a long green Indian variety), Ichiban (a black Japanese variety), and Neon (a purple, in between sized variety). Ichiban has been around since the 80s, when I got it at a local nursery, that started growing unusual variety (and before I started everything from seed!), and is the first variety to flower for me every season, though it is not resistant to heat, as is Hari, which has also grown close to 7' for me, and produced through the heat of some of the worst summers. Neon is almost as heat resistant as Hari, but not quite, and like hari, is also very productive, and not at all bitter, even if it gets seedy. Many of these varieties dropped their blossoms in mid 90s, and up, as many tomatoes do. I expected some of them to be heat resistant, since they are from the tropics, but it didn't happen. And many simply did not produce much, right next to others that I had good luck with.
One drawback I had with eggplants way back was when I was growing potatoes, and the bugs infesting the potatoes - one of the potato beetles - totally wiped out the eggplants, to a netting of their leaves. Yet the potatoes were barely affected. I never grew potatoes again - I like eggplants much more (as you can tell!).
Have you ever grown these, or anything else, in sub-irrigated planters? Earthbox is the well known brand name, though HD and Lowe's have their own now, they have become so popular. The ones I grow the EPs in are homemade, from 18 gal Rubbermaid tubs. I have harvested so many eggplants the last few years from 6 plants in these that I reduced it to 4 this season!
Here are all of the varieties I have tried. This season, the Hari seeds didn't germinate well, so I had to buy some plants. All they had were Ichiban (which I had, with Neon) and Indian, so I tried the Indian, whatever it is!
Here are the plants, so far. As always, the Ichiban are flowering first; the Neons have some buds, but not open yet. The Indians have no buds yet.
Neon eggplants on L, Ichiban on R. 6-12 by
pepperhead212, on Flickr
Indian eggplants, 6-12 by
pepperhead212, on Flickr
Unfortunately, Neon is not available any longer. Even though the "replacement" for it has the same photo, it's not the same! They did that with Neon, and Ichiban back in the 90s, but fortunately, the seeds kept until they showed up about 5 years later, on ebay. I'll just keep looking...
Here are all of those varieties I've tried, in case you want any info on them.
Andaz
Apple Green
Aswad
Bambino
Bangladeshi Long
Bijli
Black Beauty
Casper
Comprido Verde (S. aethiopicum)
Cambodian Green
Dancer
Dark Green Thai
Fairy Tale
Green Goddess
Hansel
Hari
Ichiban
"Indian" EP
Kermit Thai
Little Fingers
Louisiana Long Green
Machiaw
Malaysian Pink
Malaysian Red
Mangan
Moneymaker
Neon
Orient Express
Osterei White
Ping Tung Long
Rosa Bianca
Rosita
Round Mauve
Shiva
Snowy White
Thai Long Green
Thai Long Purple
Thai Round Purple
Turkish Red (S. aetheopicum)