If you're an eggplant lover like myself, although I didn't use to be, I think as I grow up as a gardener and a person and my palette evolves, I start to really enjoy most foods in general.

And hopefully, eggplant is one of those foods for you as well.

Let's go over eight different varieties that you may want to try out both in the garden and

the kitchen this year.

Your first is graffiti eggplant, also known as Sicilian eggplant,

and this one I wouldn't call it a graffiti look personally.

To me it looks like you took a brush filled with purple paint and you just lazily

swiped it down a white wall so you have this nice purple and white speckling streaking

vertically down the eggplant that looks really

really nice. The stripes will go away as it's cooked so it's kind of a bummer but

still it has a striking visual appeal in the garden. Next you have Italian eggplant which really looks very much like the classic

globe eggplant that you'll find at your grocery store but it's smaller and it's a little bit

wider and the flesh is a little bit more tender. So you can give that a shot if you want to prepare an Italian style dish.

Next you have my favorite which is Japanese and Chinese eggplant. These have a much more vibrant deep purple and they're much longer and

thinner and the skin is very thin as well so you can give those ones a try.

Now some that I found on my tour up the California

coast last year, the California Vegetable Trial Tour, are Fairytail Egg Plants.

These are tiny. Now they won't stay that small. You can actually grow them up to

normal size, but most people like to harvest them when they're nice and young. You'll prepare

them the same way you would any other eggplant, but most people will take them,

pick them young, slice them down the middle, and throw them on the grill.

Okay, now there's a lot of different varieties for this category and that would be white eggplants. They look

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