Mirliton How-To Tips
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Rethinking The Mirliton Planting Schedule: Winter Vines and Summer Shade
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
How to Hand-Pollinate Mirlitons
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 horse hair bristles (the nylon brushes won’t work). 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.
Identifying and Managing Anthracnose in Mirlitons (Chayote)
Sudden wilt and dead leaves caused by anthracnose.
Anthracnose is a summer disease caused by many fungi, but the pathogen that affects mirlitons is Colletotrichum orbiculare. For the purposes of this article, I will call Colletotrichum orbiculare the “anthracnose fungus. It is a chronic problem with mirlitons, and it’s the main reason plants die in the first year. There is no known synthetic or biological fungicide that can prevent or eradicate anthracnose in mirlitons, although Mirliton.Org is testing some new biofungicides.
But anthracnose is like a sprained ankle; you can’t prevent it or take a pill to cure it, but you can minimize the risk of getting it and speed up the healing process.
Anthracnose and powdery mildew (PM) are fungal diseases that start with a common sign: leaf yellowing (chlorosis). It’s important to recognize the difference because powdery mildew can be treated, while anthracnose can’t. The PM fungus spreads on the surface of leaves, initially as faded yellow dots and then yellows the whole leaf until it wilts and dies.
Anthracnose, in contrast, grows inside the leaf cells and spreads cell-to-cell (intercellularly), so it tends to spread between the leaf veins and form sharp wedges. It kills the tissue within the wedge, spreading across to the whole leaf, so you will see both yellow and brown tissue in the same wedge photo.
The anthracnose fungus also penetrates the stems, leaving brown lesions on the surface that emit a gummy exudate–another distinctive of the disease. Once inside the stem, it blocks the flow of water and nutrients downstream to the rest of the plant. The “girding” process is why you will see a sudden wilt and death of a stem branch. Brown stem lesions and sudden wilting are key signs that the vine has an anthracose infection.
Anthracnose lesion with gummy exudate on the stem.
Mirlitons tend to experience anthracnose epidemics in July and August due to rainfall patterns. Intensive rains splash up anthracnose fungi from the ground onto the plant stem. The fungus incubates during warm nights and produces thousands of spores that are contained in a sticky base. Rainstorms dissolve the sticky film, which releases the spores. Then, raindrops splash the spores to adjacent leaves, and that’s why anthracnose epidemics occur during the hot, rainy season.
The good news is that for every stem lost, a healthy, usually a mature vine, will send up a new shoot. It is a tug-of-war with the disease through the summer, but generally, the disease will disappear by September in time for flowering and fruiting. Additionally, once infected, that mirliton plant will acquire increased resistance to anthracnose every time it gets the disease. So, if your vine develops anthracnose this year, it is less likely to develop it next year. However, first-year plants are more vulnerable and can die from the disease.
The key to surviving an anthracnose epidemic is to have a healthy vine in place before the epidemic. That means a well-drained and aerated vine. When the soil is water-saturated and oxygen is unavailable in the root zone, plants undergo dramatic changes to survive. They are literally in anoxic soil, similar to the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. They shift from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism, resulting in only 5% of the energy efficiency found in healthy, aerated soil.
As a consequence, they produce toxic organic and inorganic compounds and deprive leaves of potassium, a crucial element for maintaining leaf functions. After 24-48 hours, the roots have been damaged, making it more difficult for them to uptake water and nutrients. Leaf functions are weakened, and the whole plant is vulnerable to anthracnose and other diseases–and will reduce vegetative growth and fruiting.
The challenge for us is that, unlike most of the U.S.A., well-drained soil is difficult to find along the Gulf Coast. Most of the suburbs and many new developments were built on reclaimed swamps that were filled with soil from local rivers. That soil was never intended for agricultural use, and it drains poorly, has a high water table, and intense rains can quickly saturate the soil, leaving it anoxic.
So, drainage is a key factor in disease prevention.
Solutions: The most reliable way to prevent anthracnose is to protect the roots.
Ground Planting:
Make sure the soil is well-drained and aerated. Plant on your highest available area, use planting hills, and avoid planting near roofs. Plant near a tree if you have one; trees are natural sponges and tend to stabilize soil moisture. If you already have the vine planted, you can dig shallow drainage trenches to remove excess rainfall away from the vine or add a corrugated drain pipe or a French drain.
Raised-bed Planting:
Raised beds are particularly vulnerable to anthracnose and should be avoided if possible. Remember that a raised bed can’t drain into a saturated yard, so you need to construct a bed that will permit excess rainfall to escape laterally through the sides. Add a lateral route for excess water to exit above ground level by drilling 1/4 “ holes along the side panels.
Play the Odds:
Raising one mirliton is tricky, but raising several increases the odds that you will make it through the first year. Mirlitons acquire resistance to some plant diseases over time, so there is a benefit to keeping a plant alive for several years.
Summary:
For now, the best protection against anthracnose is (1) to use only locally grown heirloom mirlitons for seed since they are likely to have some resistance to anthracnose; (2) plant in well-drained, aerated sites; (3) provide plenty of trellis space so leaves on top can spread out and get maximum exposure to the sun (a natural fungicide) and air circulation; (4) minimize leaf/soil contact by using an overhead horizontal trellis at least 4 feet above the soil; (5) remove all dead leaves after an anthracnose infection and dipose of them in a plastic bag; and (6) always irrigate gently with a hose set on low on the surface or drip irrigation to prevent splash-up of soil-borne fungi. Do not water mirlitons from the top down. Once leaves and stems are brown and dead, remove them and dispose of them away from the vine.
Click here to learn the signs of anthracnose.
How the anthracnose fungus works:
Colletotrichum orbiculare is a versatile fungus because it feeds on all kinds of tissue–living or dead. The scientific terms for its mode of parasitic activity are biotrophic, saprotrophic, and necrotrophic, which simply mean it can live off living tissue, dead tissue, or both.
Understanding necrotrophic helps diagnose anthracnose. This means the fungal pathogen will destroy a section of the leaf, turning it yellow, and then consume the remaining section until it is brown (necrotic), effectively eating a hole through the plant. The brown spot on the leaf or on the edges is a reliable indicator of anthracnose. PM, in contrast, is an airborne spore that can deposit at the top of a plant and is not as versatile; normally, the leaf will simply uniformly turn yellow and wilt before dying (necrotic), with paper-like spots and holes appearing.
Click here to see photos of anthracnose infection signs on leaves and stems at different stages (click on each photo for descriptions)
Click here for information on identifying and managing powdery mildew.
What is a Certified Louisiana Heirloom 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) worldwide with different names. They are what botanists call a “landrace.” Landraces are open-pollinated domesticated plants that have developed over time, adapted to their natural environments, 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 classify it and its subvarieties based on fruit appearance. 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 searching for growers of our Louisiana landrace to replace the ones in New Orleans. 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 distinct subvarieties within 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.
In 2024, we have reached the point where we have identified most of the Louisiana subspecies. To simplify matters, from this point forward, we will classify mirlitons into three categories for discussion in our Mirliton.Org Facebook group.
- Certified Named Heirloom Mirliton: These are varieties submitted to Mirliton.org in the past that met all requirements and were unique enough to be named by Mirliton.org for tracking and preservation.
- Certified Unnamed Heirloom Mirliton: These are varieties grown along the Gulf Coast south that were obtained from an unknown source (a local farmer, a seed store, etc.) and were submitted to Mirliton.Org for certification. After reviewing them, Mirliton.Org determined that they met all the visual criteria for heirlooms. If we certify it, you can say on the Mirliton.Org Facebook group that you are growing a “certified heirloom mirliton.”
- Anyone can submit photographs of their variety for review at no cost. Submit photos to lance@mirliton.org.
Named Certified Louisiana Heirloom Mirliton Varieties:
Ervin Crawford
Ishreal Thibodeaux
Boudreaux-Robert
Papa Sylvest
Bogalusa whites
Chauvin-Rister
Miss Clara
Remondet-Perque
Joseph Boudreaux
Bebe Leblanc
Maurin
Jody Coyne
Dupuy-Prejean
Gonzales
Unnamed Certified Louisiana Heirloom Mirlitons:
Here is an updated list of people who have submitted photographs of mirlitons they are growing to be certified as part of the Louisiana Heirloom Mirliton landrace. We have examined them, and the fruit matches all the characteristics (morphology) of the traditional Louisiana Heirloom Mirliton landrace. Accordingly, we have determined that they are the Certified Louisiana Heirloom Mirliton variety. The owners are entitled to refer to them as “Unnamed Certified Heirloom Mirlitons.”
(photographs and date submitted are on file)
Why We Track Heirloom Varieties:
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.
How to get Mirlitons to Sprout Quickly: Incubate Them!
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, 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 fruit can look healthy but have not been properly pollinated and will not sprout and grow a new vine (it’s called parthenocarpy). That occurs more frequently in the spring when there are fewer pollinators and they have more flowers to distract them from the mirlitons.
How to Fertilize Mirlitons
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) Generally, don’t fertilize after July–unless necessary. If you are using fast-release fertilizers with a high nitrogen content, stop fertilizing in July, before the flowering season begins. A strong dose of nitrogen-rich fertilizer can delay and disrupt flowering. It will cause the vine to direct all its energy into new vegetative growth rather than into reproduction (flowering).
However, sometimes if your vine failed to develop an adequate canopy over the summer and you think you need more canopy for more fruiting, go ahead and apply a light foliar spray of nitrogen in August. Many growers have done that and not experienced delays in flowering. It may be at the expense of flowering, but it may be a tradeoff you are comfortable with.
You can also treat the vine in August and September with a high-phosphate fertilizer (0-45-0), which does increase blooms.
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 you do the experiment with different techniques? I got these thoughtful responses. Click here to read them.
Preparing Your Mirliton Planting Site
- Select a plant site. The most important thing to keep in mind is that water-saturated soil can drown a young mirliton. Even if your plant survives intense rains, excessive soil moisture later in the summer will stress the plant leading to anthracnose. Choose the best well-drained site on your property–away from roof run-off and preferably near a tree drip line. The vine does not have to initially be in full sun because mirlitons are sun-seekers and will follow a trellis to available sunlight. Ensure you have sufficient space for an overhead or vertical trellis.
- Make a bed or a pit. Mirlitons thrive in loamy, well-drained soil. If you have that, prepare a bed at least 10′ x 10′ which will allow for an overhead trellis that can double as an enclosure for frost protection. Till the soil and add amendments if necessary (if you are using a raised bed, tilling the soil beneath is imperative to ensure bed drainage). But most growers are not fortunate to have good soil and certainly don’t want to waste a $10 seed on a $1 hole. In that case, I recommend a planting technique taught to me by Ishreal Thibodeaux of Opelousas: the pit method. It has been successfully used around the world wherever gardeners have clay or any poor soils. With this pit method, you essentially build a container below ground and fill it with your preferred soil mixture, just as you would for house plants. First, dig a pit 2′ x 2’ x 18” deep. Then fill it with a mix of equal parts: (1) the topsoil you removed from the hole, (2) commercial garden soil, (3) compost, and (4) manure (rabbit, if available). The wider the pit, the better the vine will do. Make enough mixture to also build the hill on top (below). If you choose to simply fill the pit with commercial garden or potting soil, make sure to blend it together with the topsoil that you removed (piling garden soil into the hole can create a “water barrier” where the ground soil cannot absorb excess moisture).
- Build a hill. Make a 2’ x 2’ hill on top of the pit using the same mix. Transplant your mirliton into that in late March after the normal last frost date and add a wire cylinder trellis so the vine can climb to the overhead trellis.
- Harden off the transplant: If you are planting a container plant that you have had inside or in a shaded area, ensure you place it in full sun for a few hours a day for five days before transplanting it into the ground. Sudden exposure to a full day of direct sunlight can burn the plant.
- Planting a Sprout? If you decide to directly plant the sprout instead of a containerized plant, skirt the surface and initial trellis with wire cloth to protect it from squirrels:
Steel wire squirrel protection. Wire mesh can also be used with ground plantings to prevent rodents from digging up the vine.
- Assemble your defense force. Prepare now for rain, pests, and diseases. We suggest you buy a: (1) rain gauge, (2) a soil sampler for testing soil moisture (3) potassium bicarbonate for powdery mildew, (4) BT for preventative management of vine borers, (5) sevin for preventative management of stink bugs, and (6) a shade cloth for the first two months of the plant.
Links:
Soil Sampler for Testing Soil Moisture
Potassium bicarbonate
How To Water A New Mirliton Seed
The video at the bottom of this post explains in 60 seconds the simple bamboo skewer stick soil moisture technique that will prevent you from drowning your young mirliton.
If you get a mirliton sprout and it’s too early to ground-plant it, we recommend that you plant it in a 3-5 gallon container or grow bag filled with potting soil. It can remain in the container for more than a year and can be pruned back if necessary. Watering is the main problem you may encounter. The mirliton needs very little water the first several weeks because it comes with its own water source–the fruit. You should initially thoroughly water it and leave it alone for a few weeks so you don’t drown the roots. The only way the container will lose water is through evapotranspiration—by natural evaporation of the soil and loss of small amounts of water through the leaves (transpiration).
The best way to check the soil moisture in a 3-gallon container is the bamboo skewer stick test. It works better than any expensive electronic tester. Insert and withdraw the skewer quickly and visually examine it. It will provide you with a graduated reading–each particle of soil represents the available moisture at that specific level. The bottom of the stake will show the moisture at the deepest level. If a few soil particles adhere to the skewer, that means they are moist, which means you have good soil moisture. If it comes out clean and dry, it needs water. If it comes out smeared and muddy, that’s too much moisture. After visually examining it, run the skewer between two fingers to feel the moisture at the different levels. You will develop a good sense of when it’s not drenched or dehydrated.
Then, leave the stick out to dry for the next test.
Using this “sight and feel” method is similar to the one that soil labs use to assess clay content for a soil sample–they roll the soil between their fingers and use their senses to judge the clay content. We don’t advise that people use the knuckle method, where you insert a finger into the soil. That will tell you if the top inch of soil is moist but not if the rest of the container is drenched.
When you move the plant outside, it may lose moisture and need to me monitored more regularly. Here’s the quick and simple video: bit.ly/3w6vJ8o
In addition, you can use the skewers to help peel the mirliton! View the 60-second tutorial here.
How To Grow A New Mirliton Seed
Sprouted Mirliton
If you have just harvested or obtained a new seed, you have two options: (1) store it as a sprout for several months, or (2) overwinter it in a 3-gallon container.
To store it as a sprout, place it in a cool, dark location in a brown paper bag, and it will sprout and remain viable for several months. You could then plant it in the ground in March.
However, we recommend that you get the plant growing in a container as soon as possible, because that will create a strong root ball for transplanting in March and produce a spring crop! To achieve a spring harvest and a strong plant going into the next summer, you will need to sprout the seed and immediately plant it in a 3-gallon container.
Here are the steps:
1. Mirlitons should be sprouted (germinated) before planting. If your mirliton has not sprouted, (fig. 1) place it horizontally on top of the refrigerator– the warmest part of your house. If it does not sprout within two weeks, you should speed up the process by “incubating” the sprout (explained here)
Fig. 1. Unsprouted mirlitons.
2. If your mirliton has already begun to sprout (tongue sticking out) (fig. 2), you are ready to overwinter it to help it develop a root ball.
Fig. 2. Sprout first emerges (above) and shoots extending (below). These are ready to plant.
3. Over-wintering: Once your mirliton is sprouted, you plant the whole fruit at a 45-degree angle about 2/3 of the way down with the sprouting end down in a 3-gallon plastic or cloth container filled with good potting soil (fig. 3). Water thoroughly the first time. Mirlitons don’t need much water during the overwintering. Here’s how to use a bamboo skewer to test soil moisture. Or you lift the container slightly every few days to gauge if the soil is drying out, and only water if it is noticeably light. David Hubbell has an excellent video on overwintering a mirliton here.
Fig. 3. Sprout planted “sprouting end down” at a 45-degree angle with about 2/3 underground in a 3-gallon container.
4. Trellising: Use a 24” – 36″ tomato cage as a trellis. Let it climb the cage, but you can safely prune it back to keep it compact—a plant in a 3-gallon container can last for up to a year (see diagram below). Overwinter it inside in a sunny area. Or, if the weather permits, you can keep it outside in full sun and bring it in when there is a risk of frost or freeze. You can also store it inside using grow lights (natural light or a full-spectrum grow light set to sunrise and sunset). The goal is to develop a good root ball. When you transplant it into the ground in the spring, you can unwind the vine from the tomato cage and attach the canopy to your garden trellis (see the images below).
Mirlitons trellised on tomato cages.
If you choose to prune the plant to keep it compact — rather than trellis it — you can cut back the top growth, but leave at least three nodes with shoots above the soil line.
5. Give the container plant as much sun as possible, preferably outside, and bring it in when temperatures drop below 42 °. If you have rodent problems, protect it with a wire cage:
Steel wire squirrel protection. Make the mesh guard at least 3′ high to protect new growth. Wire mesh can also be used with ground plantings to prevent rodents from digging up the vine.
6. Transplanting: If you don’t want a spring crop, transplant your container plant into your ground site or raised bed in April after the threat of frost. If you want a spring crop, you need to transplant in the first week of March. Be prepared to cover it with a bucket or tarp in case of a frost. Harden it off for a few days before transplanting into full sun. See the Quick Guide for instructions on building a grow site and general procedures for watering, fertilization, shading, and plant pests and diseases. Join the national mirliton gardeners Facebook Group to post questions and follow the progress of other Mirliton gardeners here.
Well-developed root ball on a 3-gallon plant ready to transplant into the ground.
Squirrel Repeller That Works
Meet The Squirrelator
Well, it doesn’t eliminate them, but it does scare them off, and anyone who has ever grown mirlitons knows that squirrels eat the vine endings and steal the fruit. What to do? A wise old extension agent in Mississippi once said, “If there are 100 cures for something, probably none of them work.” I tried a 100 for squirrels: CDs, noise repellers, and cayenne on the bird seed (the Cajun squirrels loved it). None of them worked. This motion-activated sprinkler shoots a short burst of water in an arc over your vine.
David Hubbell tested it for the last two years– complete with a game camera that he used to monitor it. The thing works. It is based on the simple principle: Did you ever see a squirrel dancing in the rain?
They work for other crops and will also keep your neighbors from pilfering your garden at night.
It’s available at most online stores, but here’s the Amazon link.
(If you are trying to protect a container plant or a new small plant, a wire mesh guard will also work.)
Wire mesh guard for protection against squirrels.