Climate change has upset mirliton growing. Heat Domes and Heatwaves kill most first-year plants. If the heatwaves don’t get them, they flower too late to produce fruit. Your vine burns up before it can flower and fruit in the fall. Or a September hurricane’s winds traumatize the vine and stop flowering entirely.
But we’ve discovered a proven way to grow a crop without heatwaves, hurricanes, or anthacnose.
Make your goal a spring crop, not the fall.
For two hundred years, Louisiana gardeners got a mirliton in the fall, stuck it in a paper bag, put it under the sink for the winter, then took the sprout and planted it in late April — long after the last frost. It would grow all summer and flower and fruit in the fall.
Climate change has ruined that tradition.
Intense heat waves make that nearly impossible.
But we learned a couple of years ago that once you put a sprout in a container with potting soil, the reproductive clock starts ticking. Within 110-120 days, it will flower and fruit.
All you have to do is overwinter the sprout in a 3-gallon container, transplant it into the garden bed early — the first week of March — and it will grow a small canopy and set fruit by May. Long before the heat waves, hurricanes, and diseases start.
Do that every year: Incubate the fall fruit to get it to sprout, immediately container-plant it, overwinter in the container, transplant in March–and shoot for a spring crop.
If the vine makes it through the summer, then the fall crop is lagniappe!
And since spring mirlitons have a smaller canopy and take up less space, you can plant several vines on a vertical trellis to increase the yield!
The world has changed.
Change the way you think–not the way you plant.
Lose the paper bag and gain a crop.
Read here how to overwinter your sprout.
Read here how to incubate the mirliton to get it to sprout early.
Excessive rain is the main challenge in spring. Read here how you can easily make a rain guard to protect them.