Eggplant leaves are pretty rough. I doubt that anybody likes to eat that. Even deer have left them alone in my garden. And I don't think touching them is a problem. Plus kids should be wearing gloves in the garden anyhow. There are bacteria and other things in the soil that they shouldn't be touching.

I was more concerned about them eating them, but gloves are always a good idea in the garden!

I guess I would be more worried about my kids being snatched form the garden by terrorists than them eating enough tomato / eggplant leaves to do any harm. LOL!! Take a taste sometime, they're pretty bitter.

Kids don't usually browse and munch through the plant leaves in the garden like animals do. Unless someone gives them the idea - makes a big deal out of telling them to NOT do that - then of course that's exactly what they will do. ;)

But if one was silly enough to eat one of them then yes, they are quite toxic just as all the other members of that family are and depending on how much of it they ate a trip to the emergency room would be required.

Contact dermatitis from the leaves, just as with tomatoes, is far more common.

Dave

My Mom let me "help" in the garden from pretty much birth and informed me of the wrongness of putting certain foliage into my mouth. So I never did. Got to tell you, eggplant leaves are hairy, sometimes prickly, tough, and smell bad when you crush them so that would have to be one determined kid to stick one in the mouth. They are safe to touch. And unless you have kitties that use the garden as a litter box, I wouldn't be too worried about bacteria in the soil. We are all exposed to billions of different bacteria all the time and frankly it isn't really prudent to try to sanitize the entire world. Just teach the kids about garden safety and keep an eye on them! :) Oh and the only actual reference to a toxin in eggplant leaves I could find was a statement that they contain nicotine, and 20 lbs of leaves equal the nicotine in 1 cigarette. I think there are other alkloids in them, though. Cheers!

Sunni

Interesting!

Thanks for the responses. I do have barn kitties and my horses provide the fertilizer, so gloves are a good idea.

The reason I was asking, is these are not my children, but nieces, nephews and friends' kids, who may not have gardens at home.

Good to know that the leaves are so unappealing. My biggest concern was the bambino eggplant I was hoping to put with the mini-veggies. I already ordered the seeds, but I can use them in the tomato garden. The heat from the house is probably a good idea for the tomatoes and all the eggplants, since it's pretty cool here at night sometimes. They may not do well even then, but I thought it would be fun to try some :)

BTW, pepper leaves are edible.

Yeah, come on folks. Let's get real. Next you'll be putting the kids in hazmat suits!

Gardening is done in the dirt and kids love dirt. But germaphobics probably shouldn't indulge in gardening.

And barn cats and horse manure pose no threat to kids or far too many of us country folk wouldn't survive our childhoods. Nor would our kids and grandkids.

Dave

Amen Dave.

Also, you have to keep teaching your kids what not to eat or do and tell them about consequences. And when they are TOO young you must superwise them.
There are more poisonous stuff in the air, water, canned foods etc than plants in the garden.

If the kids are old enough to help in the garden, they're old enough not to be stuffing everything they see into their mouths.

THANK YOU DIGDIRT!....for restoring some faith in the coming generations. LORDY...what ever happened to mud pies, playing army with dirt clods, building forts, or digging for fishing worms? Shoot, many folks STILL eat dirt and swear by the health properties. Even saw good old GA clay packaged for sale FOR EATING. They swear it settles the stomach and is just full of minerals. Maybe I'm too old, but it seems the little darlings would do better out playing in the dirt with absolutely NO toys, so that they actually have to think and interact, than in front of TV's and computers being entertained. If folks want a crusade to stop something or keep it from kids, STOP the sale of Castor Beans, Pennyroyal, and plants that HAVE killed many and are proven to be dangerous, but if a kid comes home without being covered head to foot to dirt...send them back outside to try again!

As kids, we did a lot of things more dangerous than playing in the dirt and, in most cases, suffered nothing worse than a bee sting or the occasional broken arm.

We were told, "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die".

Jim

Mensplace,

I see you mention that GA clay is for sale as a stomach soother. You are absolutely correct, and I thought I would add some more info on that. The reason is specifically because the clay around NE GA and Western SC contains high amounts of the mineral Kaolin.

Uses of Kaolin include:

A folk medicine use is to soothe an upset stomach, similar to the way parrots (and later, humans) in South America originally used it.[13]

Kaolin is, or has been, used as the active substance in liquid anti-diarrhea medicines such as Kaomagma and Kaopectate, and Pepto Bismol. Such medicines were changed away from aluminium substances due to a scare over Alzheimer's disease[citation needed], but have since changed back to compounds containing aluminium as they are more effective. Kaolin is known in Traditional Chinese Medicine by the name ³à ïì (ch¨¬ sh¨ª zh¨©), "crimson stone resin" in a direct translation. Its taste is sweet, astringent and warm. In traditional Chinese medicine, it's used for restricting leakage from intestines and stopping diarrhea, blood containment and stopping bleeding, wounds healing.

But, if you're not in the NE GA area, I wouldn't go randomly eating just any GA clay. Unless you just like the taste of it. :)

Susan

"you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die". my brother says, they don't tell you the interval between the eating of said dirt and the act of dying... haha.
I make my kids play outside, and am glad I am not alone in leaving them to get on with it, it is amazing how they use their imaginations to use stuff to make games and stories, on and "worm houses" my husband panics, and hates them being dirty,
in the summer the clean up is part of the fun, they get covered from head to toe in dirt and before Dad comes home, we used the hose to hose them down, by me "catching" them, whilst they run round screaming and laughing, I have also done this with a watering can, when hose pipe ban is on, just a little harder on the old legs :-). they then strip off outside and come in for a quick shower, for the bits of grass.

I think it's great that kids play in the dirt and get dirty. We did, in our back yard, which didn't include rusty metal wire, old farm machinery, plastic bailing twine (sometimes attached to rusty wire) and old stirofoam (no idea where this comes from). This has been a working farm for a century and there's all kinds of junk that comes up out of the clay...including parts of machinery.

That being said...I always wear gloves in my garden. That and the aged horse manure is a good reason to do so. The vegetable garden is going into an area that has been horse pasture for a number of years. I'm hoping to find most of the surprises when I rototill, edge the beds and prepare the walkways, but just in case, I wear gloves. I also think it's a good idea that the older kids wear gloves. The little ones play in the garden, but have pots for their plants and plastic garden tools, which would break in the clay.

However, running around in their own backyards, making mudpies and getting covered with dirt sounds like a lot of fun :)

it is deadly

So this is a real old post, but now that Shane brought it back up I'd figure I'd add too. Just the other day I had my 6 month old sitting out next to me while I was planting some spinach seedlings. I looked over and noticed that she was munching on a sweet potato leaf! I quickly grabbed it, and replaced it with a crisp piece of romaine, but she seemed more interested in the sweet potato vines. Well, I had to give up and just move her.

Your child has good instincts. In fact better than the parent lol - just kidding... I get that it can be scary how fast our young ones can make a move while we are distracted. But the fact is that sweet potato leaves are perfectly edible, and probably a lot more nutritious than the modicum of nothing in lettuce.

well that's good to know!

I just had to look it up, and it appears you can cook them like spinach. i am going to give them a try tonight!

Yep. It's a bit confusing that they even have 'potato' in the name. The only things sweet potatoes have in common with potatoes are that they grow underground and can be cooked in the same ways. Don't get me wrong, I love a good baked potato. And can anyone even begin to diss the results achieved from the myriad of ways potatoes can be mixed with hot fat and oils - with perhaps onions and peppers? But sweet potatoes make regular potatoes seem like Styrofoam for nutrition lol.

Irony... 'sweet' potatoes? - good for diabetics. 'White potatoes'? - bad for diabetics lol. Go figure.

I hope they come out good. You may end up with a story about how your child introduced you to one of the healthiest foods there is!

Wow, a long and old thread with really no answer.

The answer is that eggplant leaves, like tomato leaves, have solanine in them. I believe eggplant leaves have somewhat more than tomato leaves. In either case they will NOT kill you. If you eat a lot it'll probably just make you sick. Fashionable salads these days use tomato leaves. They are NOT dangerous.

Well, they are dangerous like knives and hammers are dangerous. If you do dumb stuff with them, they'll hurt you.

Thank you.. My 1.5 year old just grabbed an eggplant leaf and ate it (she often grabs basil which is right next to the eggplant--i try to discourage this practice but it isn't going well ). When I saw it wasn't basil, I tried to swipe it out of the back of her mouth and couldn't.. She swallowed it. Called the pediatrician and she told me exactly what you said. One leaf is not likely to do anything as it's way too low a dose. She seems fine been over an hour now.

I grew eggplants last year 2022 and had a crop of 10 plants. They grew big and provided a lot of crop. What I didn't know was I kept getting rashes on my arms and legs and kept feeling the need to itch and what was the cause. After digging through the internet I found out it was from getting in contact with the eggplant leaves. If you touch the leaves gently, you will feel tiny pricks coming from them. If you look at the leaves magnified you will see hundreds (perhaps thousands) of sharp needle like petals protruding from the leaf which when it comes in contact with your skin (it pricks you), the poison causes the allergic reaction. All the rashes have gone except one on my arm thats been itching for months and will not go away but is starting to spread (not sure how but it is). I've come into contact with mango leaves which leaves a itching sensation for a short period but eggplant is the worst plant I've ever come in contact with! I have now stopped growing them.

Rashes from eggplant come from histamines in their leaves. Histamines aren't poisonous. Your body makes lots of them. But if you have too much of them, you can suffer from allergy symptoms. That may include rash, hives, sneezing, itching, tearing up, etc. If you have a bad reaction to eggplant leaves on the skin just take some, um pretty obviously, antihistamine. In your body, if you react to something, your immune system churns out histamines to repel it. An allergic reaction is the result. That's why antihistamines are good to nullify allergy symptoms. Tomatoes, peppers, and even spinach seem to have quite a bit of histamines as well, but eggplant leaves have those little prickers. I think mangoes don't have histamine, but they can excite the histamines in your body leading to what's called mango dermatitis.

@ daninthedirt Is solanine the histamine you are referring to? If you prick your self with the petals of the leaves, can the solanine enter your blood stream to cause internal symptoms? Thanks.

No. Solanine is a mild poison. Histamine is something different. These leaves have BOTH. But solanine won't give you a rash and allergy symptoms. If you consume a lot, it'll give you an upset stomach and diarrhea.

I should add that both solanine and histamine are largely not destroyed by cooking. High temperatures from frying can decrease solanine somewhat, though.

@daninthedirt Thanks for the all the great info and clairification. Just curious, what is your occupation? I had a diffucult time digging up any information on eggplant allergies after contact with the leaves.

I am a scientist/engineer. I know how to do literature research. But Google is your friend.