GardenEggplant variety
Orient Express Eggplant
✓ In your garden
Orient Express is an asian long eggplant, purple to black, ready in about 58 days. Slim and quick-cooking, it’s great for stir-fries and grilling. Eggplant loves heat — give it the warmest, sunniest spot and don’t rush it into cold soil. Pick the fruit young and glossy; a dull skin means it’s over-ripe and turning bitter.
“A warm-season nightshade for grilling, frying, and roasting.”
Growing basics — shared by every eggplant
Orient Express grows like any other eggplant. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Eggplant page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 18–24 in
- Row spacing
- 30–36 in
- Planting depth
- 0.25 in
- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Water
- Moderate
What is Orient Express good for?
- Grilling & roastingIts best use — smoky and silky. Great
- FryingParm, fritters, tempura. Great
- RawNeeds cooking — bitter and spongy raw. Skip it
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
—
Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Orient Express in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around late Jun, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- early Feb – early Mar
- Toughen up outside
- late Apr – early May
- Move plants outside
- early May – early May
- Growing
- early May – late Jun
- Picking
- late Jun until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Orient Express — the things that trip people up
- Eggplant is even more of a heat-lover than its cousins tomato and pepper. Wait for warm nights, give it your hottest spot, and it won’t set fruit in the cold.
- Pick the fruit young, when the skin is glossy and it springs back to a press. Left too long, the skin dulls, the seeds harden, and it turns bitter — and picking keeps the plant setting more. Watch for flea beetles on young plants.
Orient Express eggplant at a glance
| Type | Asian Long |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 58 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Purple, Black |
| Fruit size | Medium |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
Save it and the plant lights up — kept right here in your browser, no account needed. It's the first thing GardenTrack starts remembering for you.
Kept on this device. Want it safe if your browser clears or you switch phones? Back it up free — just your email, no password.
GardenTrack is in beta now — it'll remember every plant you add here and tell you what to do and when. One email, no spam.
Common questions about Orient Express
How long does Orient Express take to grow?
About 58 days from transplant — and it wants warm weather the whole way. Start seed indoors and set out only once nights are warm.
When do I pick Orient Express?
Young and glossy, while the skin still shines and springs back to a press. A dull skin means it’s over-ripe, seedy, and bitter.
Browse more eggplant varieties →