What's Eating My Eggplant?
Eggplant is the flea beetle's favorite food in the entire garden — seedlings can be riddled before you notice. But it's also on the menu for potato beetles and mites.
The usual suspects
Flea beetles
The signs: Leaves peppered with pinhole 'shotgun' damage until they look lace-doilied; seedlings can stall or die under heavy fire.
What it looks like: Tiny jumping black beetles — on eggplant they arrive in force.
What to do: Row cover transplants until flowering, plant big healthy starts rather than small ones, and yellow sticky cards to thin adults. Established plants shrug it off.
Colorado potato beetle
The signs: Ragged wholesale defoliation, fast.
What it looks like: Striped domed adults and brick-red humpbacked larvae; orange egg rafts underneath leaves.
What to do: Handpick daily, crush eggs, straw-mulch deeply, rotate away from last year's potato ground.
Spider mites
The signs: Bronzed stippled leaves with fine webbing in hot dry spells; leaves crisp and drop.
What it looks like: Paper tap-test shows moving specks.
What to do: Hose leaf undersides every few days in droughty weather; soap or horticultural oil for outbreaks.
Aphids
The signs: Sticky curled leaves, colonies on tips.
What it looks like: Green to dark soft-bodied clusters.
What to do: Water blasts and beneficials; soap if they persist.
Hornworms
The signs: Sudden large ragged holes and bare stems.
What it looks like: The same giant green caterpillar that hits tomatoes — eggplant is family.
What to do: Handpick at dusk; spare wasp-parasitized ones.
When it's not a pest at all
Fruit that browns and shrivels at the blossom end is blossom end rot — watering, not feeding. Sun-bleached patches on fruit are sunscald where leaf cover was lost.
Or just point your phone at it
Snap a photo of the leaf, the bug, or the droppings, and Harold — the advisor built into Homestead Paradise — names what he sees, tells you friend or foe, and what he'd do next. Honest when he's unsure, and careful where it counts.
Put Harold's Eyes on it — free 14-day trial