Compact Eggplant Varieties That Are Easy To Grow In Containers

A bad reputation can follow you for the rest of your life, but that's nothing compared to what some plants have endured. For centuries, eggplants (Solanum melongena), a member of the infamous nightshade family, were known as "mad apples" and were feared by Europeans. Even today, despite the fact that it is a staple in Asian, Italian, and Mediterranean dishes, eggplant is one of the most overlooked plants in our gardens. Thankfully, modern cultivars of this plant are much different than the ones medieval Europeans encountered, and after centuries of suspicion, eggplants are finally starting to get the recognition they deserve. Eggplant lovers around the world are choosing to grow compact varieties in containers to enjoy both their ornamental appeal and delicious fruits up close.

Designed for compact growth, mini eggplants will stay small yet produce high yields from a single plant. Since eggplant is best eaten fresh, having a few plants on your patio is usually enough for one or two people, anyway. Compact varieties like 'Patio Baby' only get about 20 inches tall, and you can grow these mini eggplants in small greenhouses, container gardens, window boxes, or balcony pots. With cultivars as small as 'Patio Baby', you can get by with 8-inch diameter pots, but for larger varieties, you'll get a better yield if you choose something that's at least 12 inches in diameter. You could also grow them with eggplant companion plants if you wanted to upgrade to a larger, 5-gallon pot.

In Europe, eggplants were once grown strictly as ornamentals, proving that they are actually quite lovely plants. They are an easy-to-grow vegetable for a container garden that's grown as a tender annual outside of USDA Hardiness Zones 9 to 12. With their stunning rainbow of colorful fruits and soft green leaves, it's easy to see how growing them just for their aesthetic appeal could become an obsession.

The white and purple variegation of the 'Fairy Tale' cultivar is a perfect example of how eggplants can look just as good on your porch as they taste coming from your kitchen. With the sweet flavor of this elongated oval fruit taking only 55 days to mature, you'll want to plant this in your earliest containers.

After 'Fairy Tale', we have two more eggplant cultivars that are perfect for container gardening: 'Hansel' and 'Gretel'. If it seems like there's a theme here, that's because there is. All of these plants were bred by Seminis, a trademark of the Bayer Group, selected for their early maturity dates and abundant yields. In every respect but one, 'Hansel' and 'Gretel' are nearly identical petite plants that grow to about 36 to 52 inches tall. They both produce compact, elongated fruits, but while 'Hansel' has dark purple ones, the fruits on 'Gretel' are creamy white. All three of these cultivars are All-America Selections, making them safe bets when you're deciding which variety of eggplant to grow in containers.

Eggplants get their name from the small, white, egg-shaped fruits that early cultivars produced, which looked exactly like chicken eggs. Eggplants grow around the world, but interestingly, it was Thomas Jefferson who first brought them to the United States. He began popularizing them, keeping growing records for both white and purple varieties. Today, the eggplant comes in a variety of shades, including green and black. The fruits also come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, from small pea shapes to large, elongated fruits.

If you want to grow a unique variety or two in your container garden, cultivars like 'Little Fingers' and 'Little Prince' both produce clusters of small purple fruits, perfect for showing off your green thumb on your patio or front porch. As the name suggests, the purple-black fruits of 'Little Fingers' eggplants are finger-sized. Another interesting choice would be 'Kermit', which produces small, crunchy green fruit with a white blossom end.

A mid-sized cultivar that gets about 3 feet tall is 'White Knight'. It produces high yields of medium-sized, elongated white fruit. If you're looking for the small, white egg-shaped eggplants, you can grow those, too. While they're adorable, Solanum ovigerum 'Easter Egg' is an ornamental that's not edible. Still, because it only gets about 12 to 18 inches tall, it's a good choice for a small container garden.