How Do You Pick the Perfect Moment to Harvest Ripe Eggplant?

If you've never grown your own eggplant before, you're in for a treat. I didn't really care for eggplants until I grew my own and discovered they can be tender and actually quite tasty.

Eggplants need about 60 to 90 days to produce once they're transplanted to your garden (that's about 90 to 120 days after being started from seed). We're growing these plants for their delicious fruits (yep, eggplants are, at least in the garden world, fruits), and fruit is one of the very last steps in a plant's life cycle. 

Once your plants start producing, you'll want to check on your fruits frequently. Eggplants are best harvested when they're still a little immature. That's actually when they're the tastiest and most tender (and the prettiest). If you leave it too long, your fruit can become bitter and then inedible. Trust me, you don't want to miss your window for the best flavor and perfect texture.

So how do you know when fruits are in that window? I'm so glad you asked! There are 3 signs to look for.

The Eggplant Skin Is Nice & Shiny

Eggplants are in the nightshade family alongside tomatoes and peppers. We typically look to the skin to determine when to harvest fruits in this family. A ripe eggplant has smooth, glossy skin. It's technically still an immature fruit at this point, but this is the ideal time to harvest for flavor and texture.

Once the skin becomes dull, the eggplant is overripe and the flavor will quickly decline. If the skin is already turning golden in color, you're well past the best-by date, and that fruit is pretty much only good for seed saving.

In the picture below, you can see one eggplant that's nice and shiny, perfect for picking. There's also one that's already turning dull and an overripe eggplant that should have been harvested days before.

The Skin Indents Slightly When Pressed

Press your finger to the side of the fruit. When an eggplants is at its peak flavor and texture, you'll be able to leave an indentation that then plumps right back up. If your eggplant is underripe, you won't leave an indentation. And if your eggplant is overripe, the indentation will stay. A really overripe eggplant may even feel spongy to the touch.

Frost Is on the Way

Eggplants grow best in nice, warm weather, and they have zero frost tolerance. If you're coming up on your first frost, it's best to harvest all the fruits on your plant and bring them inside. Remove the plant from your garden.

The fruits you harvested are edible at any stage when they're underripe, so they don't have to go to waste.

What's the Best Way to Harvest Eggplant?

Eggplant stems can have little prickles that irritate your skin, so put on gloves before harvesting your eggplants. Using a clean pair of pruners, cut the stem about an inch above the cap on top of the fruit. Leave the stem attached to the fruit to prevent rotting after harvest.

You might be tempted to just tug or twist the fruits free, but you risk damaging the branch. The fruits also bruise easily, so place them gently in your harvest basket.

Come back in a couple days to see if there are any more fruits ready for harvest. You'll want to keep your plants well picked to encourage them to continue producing fruit for you.

Do Eggplants Continue to Ripen After Harvest?

Like peppers and tomatoes, eggplants can continue to ripen after they're picked. If it's growing cold outside, your best option might actually be to pick underripe eggplants and bring them inside your warm home, since cold weather can delay ripening.

Place underripe eggplants on your kitchen counter, or to really speed up the ripening process, put them in a brown paper bag with a banana. The ethylene produced by the banana can quicken the ripening process. Just make sure to check on your eggplant every day. Otherwise, you might end up with an overripe or rotting eggplant.

What Happens If You Leave Eggplants Growing Too Long?

When it comes to gardening at home, you're always better off harvesting something as soon as it shows signs of being ready, even if it's much smaller than the produce you're used to seeing at the grocery store. This is definitely the case with eggplants. It's much better to harvest when the fruits are still young than miss your optimal harvest window.

If you let an eggplant become overripe on the plant, two things happen. First of all, the plant will spend all its resources maintaining that mature fruit instead of producing new fruits, which is not what you want. You want to keep your plants well picked so they continue producing for you throughout the growing season.

Second, the fruit itself will turn into something you may not want to eat. The taste will become bitter, the skin tougher, and the seeds larger. At this point, the fruit is only really good for saving your own seeds.

How to Use Up All Your Eggplants

I'm not much of a cook, but I love easy pasta dishes with eggplant.

Here are some of my favorite ways to use up large eggplant harvests:

• Make PlantYou's easy one-pot Mediterranean pasta.
• Try Martha Stewart's eggplant parmesan or spaghetti and eggplant "meatballs".
• Grill it.
• Sauté it.
• Make eggplant stew with tomatoes and chickpeas.
• Whip up Joshua McFadden's rigatoni and eggplant alla Norma.
• Try homemade baba ganoush with your favorite roasted veggies.

One tip I learned is that you should salt your eggplants before cooking them, especially if you're not always a fan of the texture or slight bitter taste of eggplants. Just sprinkle some salt on the cut side of an eggplant and then let it sit there for up to an hour. The salt will draw out some of the moisture, which makes the fruit less spongy.

How to Store Eggplant from the Garden

Homegrown eggplants are best enjoyed as fresh as possible.

You can store whatever you can't eat in the next couple of days in the fridge; wrap your eggplants in some paper towels to absorb excess moisture and then place them inside an unsealed plastic baggie in the crisper drawer. You want your fruits to be able to get a little air circulation. Remember to be careful when handling your eggplants so you don't bruise them. Enjoy them within the next four to five days.

Sliced eggplant should be placed in an airtight container in the fridge and used within a day or two.

If your eggplant has turned soft or mushy, then it's past its prime.

Enjoy the Tastiest Eggplant Harvest Ever!

Your garden-fresh eggplants will taste incredible compared to their grocery store counterparts, and hopefully you'll get to try a variety that you've never seen in the produce aisle before. Enjoy your fruits and then head right back outside tomorrow to check for more!

For more growing tips, check out our eggplant growing guide.