As we head into the final month before the beginning of fall flowering, it’s a good time to pause and prepare. Our method of gardening is the “worse-case event” technique; the old saying that “mirlitons take care of themselves” is no longer true. Due to changing climate, mirlitons need an attentive caregiver. The best way to nurture mirlitons is to plan for all predictable events even if they are improbable. The summer heavy rains and intense heat have stressed plants, but here are some tips to anticipate the possible problems and ensure a good harvest.
Monitor your vines daily. Nothing is better than spending some quality time with your mirliton scouting for pests, disease, and watering problems. As my friend and mirliton expert grower Paul D’Anna says, get your morning cup of coffee and visit your vine daily.
Diseases. This is the time for the plant disease anthracnose which thrives on high heat and moisture. Colletotrichum lagenerium, the fungus that causes anthracnose, is a global problem and there is no effective organic treatment for it. But generally plants that suffer some die-off in August normally recover in September and fruit. Remove the yellowed and dead leaves and place in a plastic bag and dispose. Here are some photos and FAQs on the disease:
Not all wilting is caused by anthracnose. Mirlitons will naturally wilt during the day in July and August yet they recuperate at night when they normally uptake water. Drying out actually toughens the leaves and protects them from disease. To diagnose soil moisture problems, look for traces of guttation and use a bamboo stake to test soil moisture daily.
Insects. Leaffooted stink bugs tend to show up for mirliton buffet once flowering starts. See examples of juvenile and adult bugs here. They are tough critters and mature bugs are impervious to insecticides, but they can easily be picked off with a butterfly net or a hand vacuum. I use a portable 20 volt vacuum with a PVC pipe extension (grandkids love to suck up pesky bugs), but a cheap butterfly net will suffice. Again, remove the bugs to a bag and dispose. We are experimenting with a “trap crop” strategy to divert stink bugs and will report out soon.
Pollinators. Mirlitons need honey bees to fruit but bees are scarce these days, especially in cities that experienced flooding and hurricanes that ruined bee habitat. A bee keeper told me he removed hundreds of hives while re-roofing houses damaged by hurricane Katrina. That was their favorite home in the city. If you don’t see bees visiting your mirliton flowers about midmorning when bees normally forage, you have two options. One is to hand-pollinate which is easy and fun. See the technique here. Second is to apply a bee pheromone like Beescent in September-October to attract bees. There are no studies on mirlitons and bee attractants, though some research shows they are effective with specific crops. I will offer you the worst kind advice gardening advice on the subject; I tried it and it works for me.
Weave your vine. High winds can traumatize vines and disturb flowering. The solution is simple; as the vine grows, weave the tips of vines through your trellis so that it secures itself to the wire trellis. Best to do this throughout the whole growing season, but it’s never too late to start.
Install a sprinkler system now while it is hot and fun to get wet while setting it up. A cheap rotary sprinkler activated when temperatures are forecast to drop below 40 degrees f. at night will protect your vine from early frost. The method works, saving mirlitons through September to November cold snaps. See a simple rotary sprinkler mounted above a trellis here and a ground-mounted sprinkler here.
Renee Lapeyrolerie, proud grower in Treme neighbor of New Orleans
As a young girl in St. John Parish, Louisiana, Renee Lapeyrolerie lived in a community in which mirlitons were a common site in back yards. When she moved to New Orleans to attend Loyola University, she soon began to yearn for the lush growth of the vine. 20 years ago she bought a home in the centuries-old African American neighborhood of Treme (pronounced, Tra-May), a famous community of free people of color, many of them migrants from Haiti, and including a maternal ancestor who bought property in 1795. Haitians brought mirlitons with them from their new nation, an integral part of Haitian cuisine.
Parts of the Treme flooded during hurricane Katrina, but only a few feet. The community was part of the slim alluvial ridge along the Mississippi river and was home to mirliton gardeners for decades.
About five years ago Lapeyrolerie (pronounced Lap-a-rol-er-y) purchased a mirliton sprout from a garden center and planted it in her back yard. The vine soon spread about 20 feet along her fence and began to charge up her neighbor’s tree. Its origins as a variety are uncertain, but it is definitely part of the Louisiana landrace because it fits the phenotype (large but uniquely without furrows) and it has proven it can flourish in our climate. In the early years she had some problems with the vine flowering but not fruiting. This was not unusual for New Orleans post-Katrina because the flooding and re-roofing destroyed the habitat for bees (many hives were in attics that were disturbed by roofing). She is considering using a synthetic bee pheromone to attract bees this fall, though she can hand pollinate using instructions on our photo site.
In recent years, her five year old plant produced a good fall crop and she even got a modest spring crop in 2019. For advice on the culture of the plant, Renee had only go to her Aunt Helen and neighbors back in St. John Parish. Renee hopes to inspire fellow Treme residents to take up the mirliton and renew a tradition that is two centuries old and has donated several sprouts and plants to Mirliton.Org.
We have named the variety the “Lapeyrolerie Mirliton Variety” in honor of Renee. Lapeyrolerie Mirlitons
Lapeyrolerie Mirlitons
1 Haitian postage stamp, circa 1966
Renee Lapeyrolerie, proud grower in Treme neighbor of New Orleans
As a young girl in St. John Parish, Louisiana, Renee Lapeyrolerie lived in a community in which mirlitons were a common site in back yards. When she moved to New Orleans to attend Loyola University, she soon began to yearn for the lush growth of the vine. 20 years ago she bought a home in the centuries-old African American neighborhood of Treme (pronounced, Tra-May), a famous community of free people of color, many of them migrants from Haiti, and including a maternal ancestor who bought property in 1795. Haitians brought mirlitons with them from their new nation, an integral part of Haitian cuisine.
Parts of the Treme flooded during hurricane Katrina, but only a few feet. The community was part of the slim alluvial ridge along the Mississippi river and was home to mirliton gardeners for decades.
About five years ago Lapeyrolerie (pronounced Lap-a-rol-er-y) purchased a mirliton sprout from a garden center and planted it in her back yard. The vine soon spread about 20 feet along her fence and began to charge up her neighbor’s tree. Its origins as a variety are uncertain, but it is definitely part of the Louisiana landrace because it fits the phenotype (large but uniquely without furrows) and it has proven it can flourish in our climate. In the early years she had some problems with the vine flowering but not fruiting. This was not unusual for New Orleans post-Katrina because the flooding and re-roofing destroyed the habitat for bees (many hives were in attics that were disturbed by roofing). She is considering using a synthetic bee pheromone to attract bees this fall, though she can hand pollinate using instructions on our photo site.
In recent years, her five year old plant produced a good fall crop and she even got a modest spring crop in 2019. For advice on the culture of the plant, Renee had only go to her Aunt Helen and neighbors back in St. John Parish. Renee hopes to inspire fellow Treme residents to take up the mirliton and renew a tradition that is two centuries old and has donated several sprouts and plants to Mirliton.Org.
We have named the variety the “Lapeyrolerie Mirliton Variety” in honor of Renee. Lapeyrolerie Mirlitons
Jason Fricke Saves An Endangered Heirloom Mirliton Variety in Texas
By Lance Hill
I had a long friendship with Jason Fricke of Pearland, Texas, a city within the Houston metropolitan area, in starting his project to be the first person to grow Louisiana heirloom mirlitons in Texas. Our email correspondence dates back nine years. Fricke was raised in New Orleans and moved to Houston, where he longed to expand mirliton growing to Texas. And there was a large demand for Mirlitons in Texas, do to the large migration of mirliton-loving Louisianans that occurred after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.
Figure 1 Jason Fricke’s mirliton site in Pearland, Texas in 2014
Fricke is a persistent and thorough gardener. He read all Mirliton.Org research and listened to our recommendations. We started out encouraging him to grow mirlitons that matched his home’s climate and altitude. South Texas is similar to hot and humid coastal Louisiana; Houston is at 43 feet altitude, nearly sea-level like coastal Louisiana, and has 53 inches of annual rainfall, also comparable to Louisiana.
The first step was to provide a Louisiana heirloom mirlitons to Fricke. The most certain way to determine if a mirliton is indeed an heirloom variety is to ask the question: was the variety locally-grown or was it purchased from a store and of unknown origin? We started by giving Fricke the “James Boutte” variety from New Iberia, Louisiana that had been grown for decades by James Boutte and his son Kevin. After a few site visits to the Boutte garden in New Iberia, the elder Boutte donated several sprouts for us to place with new growers. (see the massive Boutte vine here)
We gave some of these sprouts to Fricke and after a few years of false-starts, finally in November 2014 Fricke had success, proving that mirlitons could be grown in Texas with the right variety and proper techniques. Fricke harvested 44 mirlitons of which twenty were good seed-size and were given to fellow Texans who wanted to grow them. A few were huge and reserved to expand Fricke’s garden. The smaller ones were used for Thanksgiving dinner, as is an old Louisiana tradition. The harvest was produced by four vines located in three planting spots. The diameter of the stems at the ground were 4.5”, 4.5”, 5” and 6”.
Figure 2 Fall harvest for Houston, Texas, November 2014, James Boutte heirloom mirliton variety
Originally, Fricke built a raised bed, 12″ deep and 4’x 20′ in dimensions. The problem was that the beds were not deep enough. Mirlitons don’t tolerate wide fluctuations in soil moisture content. The damping and drying-out stresses the plant and contributes to plant diseases like anthracnose. It is important that the raised bed sits on ground soil that is also well-drained. If the ground soil is soaked, the bed cannot drain properly and the raised-bed soil will also be water-logged also (bed drainage can easily be ensured by adding a perforated drain pipe to the bed, see link),
Fricke solved that problem by deepening the bed to 24”, evening out soil moisture fluctuations. He worked in sphagnum moss and used a good grade of potting soil. He placed the bed on the highest 25% of the yard, sitting on the ground soil which was a loamy clay. There was about a half-inch gap between the cedar boards and the ground soil so the whole bed was slightly raised above ground level. The bed was covered by a horizontal goat-fence trellis about 5′ above the bed.
When Fricke began growing mirlitons in 2011 he also planted cucuzza in the same bed. We advised him against growing any other cucurbit is the same garden. Cucuzza, cucumbers and other garden cucurbits are hybridized for resistance to plant fungi; that means that they can host the anthracnose fungi and while the fungus won’t kill the hybridized plants, the plants act as a sporelator spreading spores that can infect the mirliton. I have observed that successful mirliton growers grow only mirlitons and no other cucurbits to avoid this problem. Fricke removed the cucuzza and cleared the way for a healthier environment.
Fricke also began to increase his odds of success by planting multiple sprouts. It is very hard to get one or two mirlitons to grow in the first year. Multiple plantings can always be thinned out later.
In 2013, Fricke obtained 15 sprouts from James Boutte’s son, son Kevin who had taken over the vine. He learned a great deal by experimenting with different planting methods. Interestingly, out of 15 vines that Fricke started, only six made it through the summer heat of Houston. Of those original 15 vines, the three that thrived the most were planted directly in the raised beds the previous November. So starting the plants six months before in the fall was more effective than direct planting in the spring. This makes sense since a fall planting gave mirlitons several months to develop a root structure before the summer heat and rains.
Fricke had filled the beds with “Living Earth Rose Soil”, a high-quality container soil available throughout Texas, which is basically a very porous sandy soil, high in compost and organic matter. He then top-dressed the beds with his own compost and mulched a few times per year. He worked in a lot of sphagnum peat moss so that the top half of the bed was 1/3 peat. For fertilizer, Fricke added a small amount of Microlife 8-4-6 in April and some liquid 10-8-8 foliar feeding in June.
He also adjusted the watering schedule and used a drip system to try to keep the moisture levels more even. The beds drained quickly due to the sandiness, even during heavy rains. The peat moss also made a very apparent difference in moisture retention.
Now, several years into his successful mirliton project, Fricke is eager to provide “James Boutte” mirliton variety to other Texas growers.
It was none too soon. James Boutte, the scion of the variety that bore his name, died in 2015 at the age of 97. His family lost the land to the bank, so the entire mirliton farm died off.
But thanks to Jason Fricke’s determined and creative work, the “James Boutte” variety survives in its new home in Texas.
Figure James Boutte. New Iberia, Louisiana, 2010. Boutte died in 2017.
Update on the Latest Research on Nutritional and Pharmaceutical Research on Mirlitons (Chayote)
By Lance Hill (lance@mirliton.org)
Many a child grew up in Louisiana hearing the imperative, “Eat your mirlitons” back when the vegetable was a backyard staple like fig and pecan trees. As we discovered that we had use to our own long-lost Louisiana heirloom variety to have success, home-grown mirlitons have become more a part of our diet. But modern science is discovering that mirlitons are not only a natural and inexpensive food: they also have miraculous pharmaceutical and nutritional qualities. They are heart-healthy, help resist cancer, and cure hypertension.
The ancient Mayans long understood the medicinal qualities of chayote (the original name for Mirlitons). They used concoctions of it as a diuretic and to treat toxemia. Elsewhere in the world, natural healers found other uses for the squash. An Italian researcher one told me that in Italy the fresh fruit is sliced in half and applied to cuts because of the numbing effect of mirliton sap. New science is rapidly building on these insights. (Keep in mind that all these experiments use extracts of raw leaves, shoots, and fruit, so they may not apply to cooked fruit.)
Here are some links to popular and technical research. All these links have been tested and though you may get a virus warning for some of the pdfs, they sites are safe for your computer. Some of these technical articles are complex, but I think people like seeing the way scientists are testing exciting ideas in this field.
Gary Elvis Dugas’ Mirliton Vine in Lafayette, Louisiana
By Lance Hill
Gary Elvis Dugas has this beautiful mirliton vine growing in Lafayette. He purchased the seeds for Marcus Descant, The Urban Naturalist in the same town.
He kept the seed in paper bags and, when sprouted, planted them in 2-gallon containers February. He kept them and in a greenhouse then slowly brought into sun to avoid sun burn. They were transplanted into raised beds that are about 8 years old, and composted with chicken manure, leaves, and grass clippings. There is a nine-foot hog wire fence surrounding the raised beds to keep out critter. He then covered the beds with an overhead trellis made from 6” X 8” mesh fencing. He uses Miracle Grow Regular in April, June, and August.
Notice that the vine grows on chicken coops, so there is abundant natural fertilizer. Many growers have great success using chicken or rabbit manure mixed into planting holes and then applied to top once a year. That would make it a slow-release fertilizer that mirlitons need. Gary plans to cut back the plant for the winter and then hopes for a larger crop next year. He has picked several hundred this year.
Lapeyrolerie Mirlitons
Lapeyrolerie Mirlitons
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