What healthy plants actually look like

For most crops, we don’t even know what vigorous and healthy plants actually look like anymore.

We are used to observing eggplant with a single blossom per node, and leaves that are six to eight inches across, and consider that to be normal. I suppose that depends on how you define normal.

Here are some eggplants from an AEA grower in 2005, an example of the potential healthy plants can deliver. Four uniformly sized buds on a single node instead of the usual one, with a leaf size that can deliver enough photosynthates to size all of them and bring them to market.