Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 4.1
Plant tomahooks attached to overhead support cable. (Courtesy of
CuisinArt Golf Resort & Spa, Anguilla.)
There are two kinds of eggplants and peppers: the standard bush vari-
eties normally grown in the field and the staking greenhouse varieties.
Your choice depends upon space and how long you wish to grow any one
crop. I have found that the greenhouse varieties are more productive and
are more controllable in their training. The bush varieties in a hydroponic
system still grow about 3 feet tall, so they need some support with strings
as do the tomatoes but without the use of the tomahooks. The greenhouse
ones will grow all the way up to your ceiling, similar to tomatoes, but they
grow at a slower rate. When cropping them over a 6- to 7-month period,
they will reach about 7 to 8 feet in height. For this reason, it is better to use
tomahooks with several feet of extra string. The greenhouse pepper and
eggplant varieties also need to be trained to two stems, as I shall explain
later, so you need two strings per plant. Space the strings in a V-cordon
fashion, training each stem in opposite directions.
Cucumbers are trained somewhat differently. Support them with a string
tied to an overhead hook but without the tomahooks.
