by Lance Hill | Oct 30, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
Frost Protection
There is a possibility of a damaging frost whenever the temperature drops below 38 degrees. You can protect your mirliton with either a minimum or maximum plan.
Minimum plan: Tent the vine the day before with a tarp or 4mil plastic cover. A FEMA tarp will work well. Weight down the edges of the tarp with bricks (you are trying to trap the heat from the soil inside the enclosure). This will raise the temperature a few degrees and may avert the frost.
Maximum plan: Add heat to the tent. You will need an extension cord and a small space heater. A space heater will raise the tent’s internal temperature several degrees, which will protect the vine if temperatures dip to 32 degrees. There are also portable gas heaters. Buy a remote thermometer and place the sending unit in the tent enclosure and you will be able to see exactly what the internal temperature is. Remote thermometers will permit you to see what the temperature is in the tented trellis from the comfort of your home. They are the best defense against a freeze–and cost only
$20. Buy it here.
by Lance Hill | Oct 17, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
The Louisiana Mirliton Two-Step
Because of increased extreme weather events like Heat Domes and frequent hurricanes, we need to think entirely differently about when and how to grow mirlitons. We have two chances at a mirliton crop: Spring and Fall. We need to especially take advantage of our cool months, October through May.
Step One
Plant your mirliton seed or container plant in the fall and build a trellis for the vine to grow on all winter. When necessary, temporarily cover it with 4-mil plastic and warm it with a portable heater to protect it on frost/freeze days. By the following spring, the vine will have a large canopy to support flowering–and you will get a spring crop.
Step Two
To help your vine get through the summer, use the same trellis to support a 30% shade cloth to shade the vine from June through August, if necessary. That will give you a a good chance at another crop in the Fall
10’ X 25’ 4-mil plastic sheets
Space Heater
Shade Cloth
Remote Thermometer for Enclosure
by Lance Hill | Apr 30, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
Sometimes bees and other pollinators are not doing their job, and you want to ensure that your female flowers are pollinated. Gardeners are often advised to remove male flowers and apply them to the females. But this destroys the male nectar, which attracts pollinators. Instead, the simplest way is to hand-pollinate with a slender artist’s brush with dark bristles. The bristles make it clear that you have collected yellow pollen from the males. Using a brush means you do not destroy the males and can return to them for additional pollen.
Click here to see how to do it.
by Lance Hill | Apr 9, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
Mirliton is the name people gave the chayote (Sechuim edule) when it first arrived in Louisiana. Chayote is the main species and there are many subspecies (subvarieties) around the world with different names. They are what botanists call a “landrace.” Landraces are domesticated plants that developed over time and adapted to their natural environment and are not the product of human manipulation–such as plant breeding or modern genetic science. Haitians brought the first mirlitons to Louisiana over two centuries ago and that landrace thrived because it was adapted to our altitude, climate, pests, and diseases.
Since the Louisiana variety has never been analyzed genetically, we have had to use the fruit appearance to classify it and its subvarieties. The Louisiana mirliton landrace has distinctive fruit traits (morphology); they are large, slightly pear or egg-shaped, with smooth skin, longitudinal furrows (though a few may be unfurrowed), and either green or white. Over the years other varieties were probably introduced from Mexico and Central America and interbred with the Louisiana landrace. The resulting landrace was what generations of Lousianians simply called “mirlitons.” And for most of the last two centuries, there was only one variety.
Then things changed. Hurricane Katrina wiped out almost all the mirlitons in New Orleans, so I began to search for growers of our Louisiana landrace to replace the New Orleans ones. I eventually found many growers in rural areas and when I did, I would name the mirliton after the grower so that we could track and preserve it.
I soon noticed differences within Louisiana mirlitons–there were clearly different subvarieties in the landrace. Mirlitons were more complex than we thought. I decided to classify the subvarieties by fruit morphology and then interview the growers to determine the strain’s history. If it were a unique variety, we would name the variety so we could track and preserve it. That’s how “named varieties” came to be.
We have reached the point in 2024 where we have identified most of the Louisiana subspecies. To simplify matters, from this point forward, we will classify mirlitons into three categories for purposes of discussion on our Mirliton.Org Facebook group:
- Certified Heirloom Mirliton: A variety that was submitted to Mirliton.Org for visual review and met all the heirloom criteria. Anyone can submit photographs of their variety for review at no cost. If we certify it, you can say on the Mirliton.Org Facebook group that you are growing a “certified heirloom mirliton.” Submit photos to lance@mirliton.org or at the Mirliton.Org Facebook group. We maintain a public list of all certified heirlooms that you can refer people to verify that you are growing a certified variety.
- Certified Named Heirloom Mirliton: These are varieties that were submitted to Mirliton.org in the past that met all the requirements and were sufficiently unique that Mirliton.Org named them for tracking and preservation purposes.
- Louisiana Heirloom Mirliton: These are the varieties grown along the Gulf Coast south that were obtained from an unknown source (a local farmer, a seed store, etc.), and the grower sincerely believes they are Louisiana heirlooms. If you are growing one of these uncertified varieties, you can simply say it’s an “heirloom mirliton” or “Louisiana heirloom.”
There are currently 14 Certified Named Heirloom Varieties:
Ervin Crawford
Ishreal Thibodeaux
Boudreaux-Robert
Blacklege
Papa Sylvest
Bogalusa whites
Chauvin-Rister
Miss Clara
Remondet-Perque
Joseph Boudreaux
Bebe Leblanc
Maurin
Jody Coyne
Dupuy-Prejean
Why is it important to continue tracking heirlooms? Beginning in 2020, several large grocery store chains began importing chayote (mirlitons) that looked exactly like our heirloom varieties. People began buying them, using them as seeds, and growing mirlitons indistinguishable from our heirloom varieties. The problem is that imported chayote may carry a seed-transmissible virus that can destroy our heirlooms. It’s called Chayote Mosaic Virus (ChMv), which devastated crops in other countries. Recent research has also discovered new strains of anthracnose in Brazilian chayote that can be transmitted inside the fruit.
We created the certification process to help preserve and popularize the Louisiana heirloom variety. We recommend that the best way to accomplish this is to use only certified heirloom seeds.
by Lance Hill | Apr 1, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
Angela Joan incubated her mirlitons in a 5-gallon bucket with a 125w heat lamp above. They sprouted in 11 days.
Growers typically attempt to delay mirliton sprouting by placing new fruit in paper bags and storing them in a cool part of the house. Cool temperatures promote dormancy and prevent sprouting. But you may want to promote quick sprouting so you can plant them immediately in the ground or container, especially if you want to plant them in the fall. Normally, you would place the mirliton in the warmest part of your house — on top of the refrigerator. But if it hasn’t sprouted within a week or two, here’s an “incubation” trick that Joseph Boudreaux of Broussard taught me that speeds up sprouting.
You can incubate them inside your home in the fall or winter using a small plastic trash can and a heat lamp. Put the mirlitons in a 5-gallon bucket and place a thermometer on top. You can cover the bucket with cardboard, as shown in the photo below, but it’s not necessary.
You want to maintain a temperature of 80°-85°F. You may have to experiment with the distance between the lamp and the bucket. When kept warm in this manner, the fruit will typically begin to sprout within 7-14 days. Sprouting is defined as when the internal seed pushes its way to the large end of the seed (“sticks its tongue out) and a small green shoot emerges. Alternatively, you can place a heating pad underneath the container.
Angela covered the bucket with cardboard and used a remote thermometer and kept it at 85 degrees.
If the outside temperatures are in the 90s, you can do this outside in a cardboard box without a heating pad. Once you pick the fruit, place it in a shaded warm area with a constant temperature of at least 75-80°F to encourage sprouting. If storing them outside, use chicken wire or netting to protect the seed from pests that enjoy eating the new sprouts.
Once a mirliton sprouts, it means the seed is viable and can be planted. It’s important not to distribute or sell the seed until it has sprouted because sometimes—especially with Spring mirlitons—the seed can look healthy but have no internal inner seed and will not sprout and grow a new vine (it’s called parthenocarpy).
by Lance Hill | Mar 28, 2023 | How To, Mirliton
There has never been a scientific study for home gardeners on how to best fertilize mirlitons, so we get to invent the science ourselves. Any balanced fertilizer like 8-8-8 or Miracle-Gro is a good choice. A couple of tablespoons at planting and again in July is sufficient, as long as the vine is vigorously growing and green.
But there are two important fertilizing principles I have learned from experienced growers:
(1) Use a slow-release fertilizer such as manure. A mirliton’s nitrogen needs vary throughout the growing season. You don’t want to jolt their tender young roots when you first plant them. They like a buffet where they can eat light but return for more help when they need it. Manure provides that. Ideally, work into your soil or planting pit before you plant, but you can side-dress throughout the season. Rabbit manure is the best choice, but any manure will do the job.
(2) If you are using fast-release fertilizers, stop fertilizing in July before the flowering season. A dose of fertilizer can delay and disrupt flowering.
I asked our home gardener mirliton scientists last year to tell us how they fertilized mirlitons. What were the signs it was helping or hurting? Did the experiment with different techniques? I got these thoughtful responses. Click here to read them.
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