#violettalunga

[seedkeeping]

Had a great day with @dancingnomadnyc! She came all the way from NYC today to help out (again!) Here we are saving seeds from Violetta Lunga Eggplant, which is grown all over Italy. We quartered or eighthed them and smooshed them through a screen. They'll ferment for a few days and then I'll do several changes of water while I pour out the floating flesh and strain out the sunken seeds. NYC - wanna carpool down sometime? @farmschool_nyc @freedomfranso @sherylldurrant @karwasher @jazalove @leahoftheland @katypaz77 @rosalba.remedios and everyone else? #violettalunga #eggplant #eggplantseed #longpurpleeggplant #solanummelongena #nyctophilly #seedkeeping #seedsaving ps thanks for introducing us @rowenwhite!! (at Delaware County, Pennsylvania)

[seedkeeping]

Violetta Lunga Eggplant. Purple, long, tasty, and productive. Grown throughout Italy - another of my ancestral homelands. Sad to say my great aunt Rita, younger daughter of my Italian great grandparents, just passed away at 91, before I could have all the conversations and share all the meals I wanted to have with her. I hadn't told her I'd met farmers who are likely our relatives, living in the same town in Connecticut that our family settled in, working also in the textile mills, and from the same tiny village of Salento in Campania, south of Naples (Salento Farm, Shelton, CT). I was able to tell Aunt Rita's children and grandchildren (my cousins), and they shared the family documents with me, including a Blumenthal & Co. publication that described my great great grandfather Vincenzo aka James Laurello working from 3pm to dark every day in his gardens so his wife Angelina aka Julia (DeMarco) was kept busy canning corn, beans, and tomatoes for the winter. Anyways, very excited for this eggplant, and to keep digging deeper into family food history! #violettalunga #violettalungaeggplant #longpurpleeggplant #italianeggplant #openpollinated #blumenthalandco #salentocampania #campania #salentovillage (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)

[seedkeeping]

Eggplants can stretch as far into the soil as I am tall (and then some: 5.5-7 feet) with deep taproots and can span a few feet across with long horizontal roots closer to the surface. The bulk of its roots are in the first foot of soil, but I have so much more respect for the plant now visualizing its strands of self: mining, foraging, and collecting water in the depths. Source: Root Development of Vegetable Crops, Weaver and Bruner, 1927. #rootdevelopmentofvegetablecrops #eggplantroots #eggplant #violettalunga (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)