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It’s no secret that eggplants love heat very much. The abundance of sunlight gives them enough resource so that the shoots are juicy, the leaves are large and healthy, and the fruits are formed without flaws and with excellent taste. However, like any plant in the garden, eggplant is extremely vulnerable to disease, temperature changes, and lack of fertilizer. This causes the eggplant leaves to turn yellow. What to do if the leaves wither, why the leaves curl and fall, how to properly process them – we will consider in this article.
Lack of nitrogen
First of all, the yellowing of eggplant leaves can be associated with a lack of nitrogen compounds in the soil. Especially if the lower leaves on the bush turn yellow. Although different yellowing patterns can also indicate a lack of potassium, copper, iron, be sure that nitrogen fertilization of the soil should be carried out. The trick is that nitrogen helps the plant to distribute all the beneficial trace elements that are in stock and absorbed during the growth process to different parts of the bush. Consequently, the lack of nitrogen forces the plant to use the resources as it should.
It is important to maintain a balance of mineral and organic fertilizers to prevent yellowing or disease in eggplant.
Condition changes
Eggplants cannot be called a very capricious culture, but they react quite sharply to a change in living conditions – primarily by yellowing the leaves. If you have already asked yourself the question “Why do eggplant leaves turn yellow?” – so the plant has already expressed its displeasure.
Yellowing eggplant reacts to many things. For example, too high an air temperature leads to the formation of burns on the leaf plate, it turns yellow and dries out. With a lack of moisture in the air and soil, the leaves curl and then fall off.
It should be understood that if eggplant seedlings turn yellow after you have transplanted it into open ground, this is a natural process. The plant needs to acclimatize, get used to new conditions, take root in new soil. For such cases, it is important to prepare a good soil composition, fertilize it and carefully care for eggplant greens so that they quickly take root in a new place.
What to do with yellowing?
So, what should you do if the eggplant leaves dry and wither? Preparation should begin with growing seedlings so that an adult plant does not encounter this problem. Treat and harden the seeds to awaken in them all the vegetative processes necessary for rapid growth, as well as develop immunity against the invasion of fungal microflora. When planting seeds in pots, make sure that the land is well fertilized with nitrogen, mineral and, if desired, organic fertilizers. It is worth doing this for the complex development of the eggplant, when the lashes, the leaves, the inflorescences, and the fruits grow equally well.
If yellowing overtook eggplant seedlings, spots appeared on the leaves, then perhaps this is a symptom of a burn. With abundant illumination, both by the sun and ultraviolet lamps, the cellular structure of tender eggplant leaves is destroyed and necrotic. Try to create a shade or shorten the daylight hours for seedlings, thus preventing new burns. Also, when watering, try not to pour water on the leaves, as water drops become lenses, refracting and amplifying the rays of light.
Yellow spots along the edges of the leaves indicate a lack of potassium. Foliar with potash and the spots will disappear within a few days. In other cases, carry out foliar top dressing with a complex of mineral and organic fertilizers, which necessarily contain nitrogen.
One of the reasons why the lower and upper leaves of eggplant turn yellow is watering with cold water. This should not be allowed under any circumstances. Due to the fact that the water temperature is much lower than the soil temperature, the eggplant root system receives significant damage, freezing, and then rotting. This is what negatively affects the structure and color of the plant.
Often the reason for the yellowness lies in the soil in which both seedlings and young seedlings are grown – peat soil is not able to give enough micronutrients to eggplants. Therefore, when growing a plant on peat soil, it is important to provide vegetables with a complete set of fertilizers so that they do not wither from a lack of useful trace elements.
Video “Methods of growing eggplant”
Experienced gardeners give advice on how to care for eggplants.
What to do when twisting leaves
If the eggplant leaves are curled, then you should put aside all your affairs and start saving the plant. Twisting is of several types: when the leaf is folded into a tube up, when the leaf is folded into a tube down, when the leaf is folded into a tube towards the stem. Be that as it may, this means that it: lacks nutrients, it is affected by a disease, harmful insects prevent normal vegetation, the conditions of detention are violated.
If you have not yet carried out top dressing this season, then you should do it immediately. Eggplants get all the necessary nutrients from potassium compounds (potassium nitrate, potassium sulfate), superphosphate, ammonium nitrate.
As the first top dressing, you can use a solution of potassium nitrate (30 g of fertilizer is diluted in 10 liters of water), or you can use the drug “Kemira-Lux” (25-35 g of the drug is diluted in 10 liters of water). For the second top dressing, you can use a complex of different fertilizers, since it falls just at the very peak of the growing season, on the eve of the flowering period: mix 30 g of phoscamide, 15 g of superphosphate, 1 teaspoon of ammonium nitrate, 2 teaspoons of potassium sulfate in 10 liters of water . Water at the rate of 1 liter of solution per 1 eggplant bush.
If you have already carried out the main fertilizer of the soil, then the complex of mineral and organic substances will only harm the plant. You can use folk remedies: infusion of onion peel (0,5 l of peel is infused in 3 l of water, filtered before use), whey (1 l of sour milk is diluted with 1 l of water, insisted for 3 days, filtered before use) or a solution based on dry or “live” yeast (10 g of dry yeast is diluted in 10 liters of warm water, infused for 2-3 days, then diluted 1:10 and watered the beds; 100 g of “live” yeast is infused in 10 liters of warm water for 2-3 days, strain and dilute 1:10 before use).
Other reasons include lack of lighting. This can be caused by both cloudy, rainy weather, and excessive thickening of plantings. In the first case, it is worth turning on fluorescent lamps, in the second case, eggplant pinching to give access to light to all leaves.
Frequent watering, especially with cold water, is harmful to the plant. It is better to water less often, but with warm water.
If the cause of twisting is insects or fungal diseases, then it is necessary to carry out surgical treatment of the plant. Treat with fungicides, whey, soapy water or garlic infusion.
Video “How to feed eggplant?”
This video talks about natural top dressing for eggplant seedlings.
