The first time I grew eggplant, I had the same concerns as you. However, fear not. Blossom drop is common if the temperature gets too warm (even though eggplants love heat), and the flowers go unpollinated. Ideally, it should be 3-4 days after the flower is pollinated before you see the fruit begin to emerge. When the floower turns brown and dries out, thats an indication its been pollinated. Once the fruit begins to grow, thats the most critical watering period so they can swell up.

Good luck!

I agree with Bomber too.... My Black Beauty is a Black Ugly right now. I dont know what the heck is going on with the plant. It has been doing yuckie all season....
The blossoms look like they are going to die and fall off, but they will produe the fruit, so dont give up on the blossoms yet!!! -cass

I haven't had a problem with my Black Beauty producing but I see a lot of bees (mostly bumblebees) active in my garden. I guess some people may have a lot of blossom drop due to a lack of pollination if there aren't many bees around. Below is an interesting quote from: http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/book/chap6/eggplant.html

"Wind is not a factor in eggplant pollination, and vibration of the blossom will not cause a sufficient deposit of pollen on the stigma. The eggplant does not self without the aid of bees or man (Kakizaki 1924)."

If all the blossoms are dropping and there isn't a pollination problem, perhaps it could be a temperature, moisture or nutrient issue also.

Once pollinated, the flower will dry up (but not fall off) then you will see the eggplant fruit growing. It's taken mine about 2-3 weeks to ripen after this point but I guess this can widely vary depending on conditions. Below is a pic of my Black Beauty plant on June 8:
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and below is the same one today (9 days later):
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You can see several flowers/eggplants in various stages of development to get an idea of how things can progress.

I also have some blossoms drop but it doesn't really bug me as long as I also have a lot of blossoms which turn into eggplants. :)

Below link has more of our pictures (mostly garden stuff):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37730200@N05/

Tickle the blossoms and spread the pollin around. It seems like only the flowers I shake or tickle roughly set fruit.

I've only done Ichiban and the yield has been amazing. Is it the same with the black beauty or do you just get more flesh at once instead of a steady stream of smaller eggplants?

Here is a link that might be useful: The Corner Yard

Hi ribbit32004,

It seemed to take my Black Beauty longer to mature and set fruit. I've picked about a dozen Ichiban so far while I've only picked one Black Beauty so far.

You can see a bunch of Black Beauties in the above picture so maybe it might catch up a little bit if my Ichiban ever slows down.

Brian