- 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. Make sure you have room 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 $35 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 are essentially building a container below ground and filling it with your preferred soil mixture, just as you would with house plants. First, dig a pit 2’ x 3’ x 18” deep. Then fill it with a mix of equal parts: (1) the topsoil you removed from the hole, (2) commercial potting soil, (3) compost, and (4) manure (rabbit, if available). Make enough mixture to also build the hill on top (below).
- Build a hill. Make a 2’ x 2’ hill on top of the pit using the same mix. Transplant your mirliton into that in April or after the normal last frost date and add a wire cylinder trellis so the vine can climb to the overhead trellis.
- 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.
I will post on each step of the growing season in this series, including, disease and pest management, identifying subsurface soil moisture, fertilizing, inducing early flowering, hand pollination, and frost protection through sprinklers and temporary enclosures.
Links:
Soil Sampler for Testing Soil Moisture
Potassium bicarbonate