by Lance Hill | Oct 14, 2022 | How To, Mirliton
You can ground-plant a fall mirliton sprout as late as October, and a spring sprout as late as June. The June planting will have to be initially shaded. See here. Outside these two windows of opportunity, you will have to plant the sprout in a 3-gallon container until you transplant it into the ground. (see below how to container and trellis it)
1. If your mirliton has not sprouted, (fig. 1) place it horizontally in the warmest room of your house. At 75 degrees, the mirliton should begin to sprout in 2-6 weeks.
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, 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 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 45-degree angle with about 2/3 underground in a 3-gallon container.
4. Trellising: Construct a short trellis to support the vine as it grows. For the trellis, use either 24” tomato stakes with a yarn lattice or a small tomato cage (fig. 4). You can prune it back for months to keep it compact, and that won’t hurt the vine. The goal is to develop a good root ball.
5. Transplanting: When the possibility of a spring frost passes, you can transplant it into the ground. See Mirliton.Org for instructions on building a grow site and general procedures for watering, fertilization, shading, and plant pests and diseases. Click here for Mirliton.Org to find answers to all your Mirliton growing questions. Join the national mirliton gardeners Facebook Group and post questions and follow the progress of other Mirliton gardeners here.
by Lance Hill | Sep 2, 2022 | How To, Mirliton
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.
by Lance Hill | Sep 1, 2022 | How To, Mirliton
Mirliton vine the day after a frost that was protected with a rotary sprinkler. The vine is healthy and ready to produce.
A damaged portion of the same vine that was beyond the reach of the sprinkler.
No one wants to nurse a mirliton for months through droughts, floods, and hurricanes, just to have Jack Frost arrive and kill all your flowers before they can fruit. Sprinklers are the most effective, simplest, and least expensive way to protect mirlitons from an early frost. Moreover, hot weather is the ideal time to set up your sprinkler and adjust it because you don’t want to be running around getting soaked in freezing weather.
Horticulturalists in the South seldom recommend sprinklers because most home gardeners grow soft-tissue vegetables that ripen long beroe the threat of fall frost. But we can find excellent advice from Canadian experts who have perfected the sprinkler systems to protect strawberries from early Sring frosts. We used their experience to design a simple and effective defense against temperatures down to 38 degrees in the fall.
Spraying water on a plant to warm it up seems counter-intuitive, but it works because of a simple principle; when water evaporates from the leaves, it transfers heat into the plant. And when changes to ice on the surface of a plant, it will add heat to that plant. Frankly, the science baffles me, but if you want to know more about it, click here for the Canadian study. For our purposes, the sprinkler frost-defense steps are simple:
Sprinkler Set Up:
1. Place a rotary sprinkler with a metal spike securely on the ground and connect a garden hose to it.
2. Turn the hose on and adjust the sprinkler and mount so that the stream covers the entire vine. Any sprinkler will do, but it’s best to use an impulse sprinkler that can spray a 180-degree arc so you can cover the entire vine. You may have to angle it up.
3. Secure the metal spike so that it does not move when the water is left on for several hours.
When and How to Use the Sprinkler system:
1. Watch the temperature forecast. If the temperature is predicted to go below 38 degrees that night, turn the sprinkler on at sunset and make sure it covers the entire vine.
2. Normally, the coldest part of the night is 4:00-6:00 a.m, so you can turn off the sprinkler after sunrise if the forecast is for temperatures above 40 degrees during the day.
That’s it. We have tested this system on mirlitons for over 10 years and every time it has worked and saved the vines. In 2012, Leo Jones in Harvey, Louisiana used the sprinkler for only part of his vine– it lived while the rest of the vine died (photo above). In 2019, Renee Lapelrolie also used sprinkler heads on only part of her vine, and again, only the protected portion survived (photo below). Not only can the sprinkler protect the vine in the fall, but during a mild winter, it can be used instead to keep the vine alive for a Spring crop.
Buying a sprinkler:
The Rain Bird impulse sprinkler is the best sprinkler head. You can buy it with the reinforced stake and it can cover a vine 40 feet long. There are other brands available, but the Rain Bird is the only one I have had experience with.
Rain Bird Sprinkler Head With Metal Spike Base click here.
How to Adjust Rain Bird click here.
Canadian strawberry frost-protection instruction publication, click here.
Rene Laperolie’s mirliton vine after the 2019 frost. In the foreground, the sprinkler protected the vine. In the background, the unprotected vine was damaged.
by Lance Hill | Aug 10, 2022 | How To, Mirliton
I have researched how to manage squash vine borers and there is remarkably little scientific research that will help the home gardener. Big commercial growers use a chemical drench, but that’s no help for organic gardeners. I have heard everything from row covers to wrapping the base of plants with aluminum foil. Maybe they work, but I have not found any rigorously controlled studies of the methods.
Foliar spraying of BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) appears to be the most effective way to manage squash vine borers. There is persuasive research that BT works on cucurbits like mirlitons (chayote). Start spraying the vines early in the spring and continue throughout the season (don’t mix with oils because they can kill the vine in hot weather). Some people inject the BT into the vine with syringes, but this will not work because larvae don’t consume BT and it will only kill the larvae if it reaches their gut.
Click here for the best article I found on BT for managing vine borers.
Click here to read about how it is safe for humans to use on crops.
by Lance Hill | Aug 7, 2022 | How To, Mirliton
Leaffooted stink bugs have invaded our mirliton gardens and orchards. They feed on flowers and fruit, killing flowers and injecting enzymes and diseases into the fruits that ruin the flavors or bruise them. And, yes, they stink.
There are several leaffooted stink bug species in the Gulf Coast South, but the principal culprit is a new arrival Leptoglossus zonatus (Dallas), widely known as the “western leaffooted bug”. They are with us year-round and overwinter in weeds and tree bark. They emerge in the spring as “nymphs” (immature bugs) and go through five stages called instars. We will concentrate on two of the stages that gardeners are most likely to see on their vines: nymphs and mature bugs.
How to Identify:
Identifying leaffooted bugs is tricky since they look almost identical to assassin bugs, which are beneficial insects that eat bad bugs and don’t damage plants. Because they are physically similar, sometimes people try to distinguish them based on the different markings of the two species. That will work for mature stink bugs, but markings are not always useful for nymphs because they don’t appear in all instars. For example, the characteristic leaf-like “flared” back legs don’t appear in all stages of a leaffooted bug’s life (see the two photos below of nymphs with no flared legs on a mirliton fruit and flowers). A simpler and more reliable way to identify stink bugs is by behavior:
Nymph stage: For most of the growing season, stink bug nymphs are easily identified by their aggregating (swarming) behavior. They like to aggregate into small gangs and search for young flowers and immature fruit. In contrast, assassin bugs are solitary hunters, even as nymphs, and won’t be found in gangs. So don’t t worry about markings; if they behave like a gang, then they are stink bugs. You can control them at this early stage with regular spraying throughout the growing season with insecticidal soap or organic pesticides such as Bee Safe Organicide that won’t harm bees.
Immature nymph leaffooted bugs in characteristic swarming behavior. Note that at this stage, they don’t have the flared back legs.
Stink bug nymph feeding on immature flowers (also, no flared back legs)
Stink bug damage to young mirliton fruit. Note exudate emerging on top right in a bubble.
Mature stage. Adults can’t be sprayed away; they have a hard exoskeletal structure that protects them from topical insecticides. They are also solitary foragers like assassin bugs, but they are easily identified because they are vegetarians. In contrast, assassin bugs only eat other bugs while leaffooted bugs feed on flowers and fruits. They have to be removed by hand by picking them off by hand, sucking them up with a portable vacuum, or catching them with a butterfly net.
I prefer the hand vacuum (with a homemade 1/2 inch diameter PVC extension—see below) because stink bugs are highly aware and will instantly dash away at the sight of a large extension. Plus, you are less likely to damage flowers. The contents of the vacuum can be emptied into a pail of water with insecticide. Leaffooted bugs and assassin bugs are quick and elusive and difficult to identify as adults. If you accidentally removed an assassin bug, it will not hurt the species since they forage everywhere, unlike leaffooted bugs that target your vegetables and fruits.
Mature leaffooted bug. Note white mark across the back and the well-developed flared “leaves” on the back legs.
Monitor For Stinkbugs Daily:
The key to managing pests is knowing which ones are on your vine because early intervention is critical. Closely scout your vine every day, top and bottoms of leaves, and use sticky yellow insect traps to collect specimens. Click here for sticky traps.
Click here for an excellent recently updated fact sheet on Leptoglossus zonatus (Dallas)
The Dewalt 20v. portable vacuum has the power to vacuum up large bugs and can be used for household and automotive cleaning. An accessory kit is available and that will allow you to fit it with a 1/2-inch PVC pipe extension.
by Lance Hill | Jul 21, 2022 | Mirliton
You can grow two different varieties of mirliton in the same garden and still ensure that select seeds will produce the same plant as their parent variety. In botany, we call this true-to-type seed—a seed that carries the expected, desired characteristics and qualities of the parent plants. It’s easy to do.
First, the basics of mirliton reproduction. A seed is created through fertilization. Fertilization requires pollination. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the male part of the flower to the female part of the flower. Remember, pollination happens within the same species level, not between species. A mirliton and a pumpkin cannot cross-pollinate; only varieties of the mirliton species, Sechium edule can interbreed. Mirlitons are monoecious plants because they have both male (staminate flowers) and female (pistillate flowers). The pollen from the male flowers can fertilize the female flowers. This will produce fruit that ensures you will have identical offspring: true-to-type seed.
The problem is that bees, the primary mirliton pollinator, travel several miles foraging flowers and they may introduce pollen from another nearby variety. Some think that if they plant a mirliton fruit, the vine that it makes will produce fruit identical to the planted seed. This is not necessarily true. The confusion arises because plants do not reproduce the same way that humans do. When two humans mate, the immediate offspring is comprised of half the genes of both parents. Mirlitons are different. The characteristics of the fruit on the vine are determined by the genes of the mother plant, regardless of how it was pollinated.
The color, shape, and skin surface of every fruit growing on the vine are created by the genetics of only the mother plant producing the fruit. The father’s genes from the pollen are embedded deep in the inner soft seed that you see when you cut open the mirliton. This inner soft-seed is called the embryo and it contains both the mother’s and father’s genes, but at this stage, the pollen–the father’s genes– don’t affect the fruit characteristics.
The mother plant’s ovary controls the characteristics of the fruit enveloping the embryo, the fruit that we eat which includes the skin type and color. For example, assume that a smooth skin mother plant female flower is cross-pollinated by a spiny-skin male plant flower. The fruit that grows that year will still be a smooth skin fruit. The male pollen does not affect the first generation of fruit. But all the spiny genes are locked into the soft seed in the middle of the fruit, and if you pick that fruit and let it sprout and plant it, the fruit of that plant will have spines if spines is a dominant trait.
So how do you ensure that fruit from your mirliton will be a copy of the mother plant? The answer is simple: use isolation to guarantee a true-to-type seed. If you protect a female flower from pollen from a distant mirliton, you can create a true-to-type seed. You only have to protect a few flowers because you only need the true-to-type seed of the mother variety to grow the next year or to give to another grower. It’s like my dentist used to tell me, “Only floss the teeth you want to keep.”
How to Isolate flowers to Propagate True-To-Type Seed:
The goal is to ensure that the female flowers on the vine receive only pollen from the male flowers on the same vine. Mirlitons normally first produce an abundance of male flowers in anticipation of the females. Male flowers are easy to recognize; they are little yellow flowers with no appendage (tiny fruit) between the flower and the stem (captioned photos are at the bottom of this article). They tend to grow clusters. After the males appear, watch for female flowers to emerge; they will be far and few between but along the same vine as the males. The female flower petals do not initially open but they have a distinct bulge beneath the flower—a baby mirliton on the peduncle (stalk) between the flower and the vine.
As soon as you identify a female flower and before it begins to open (see attached photos ), enclose it with a small transparent pollination bag to protect it from unwanted pollen. Tie the bag at its base. Then tie a piece of red yarn around the base of the flower to mark it as “control pollinated.” When the female flower is completely open, use an artist’s paintbrush to gather some pollen from the male flowers. You will see the yellow pollen on the brush. Take that pollen to the female flower and dab it onto the pistil and retie the bag.
If the flower is successfully pollinated and fertilized, the petals will fall off the female flowers in three days, leaving the tiny mirliton fruit. You can remove the bag but leave the red yarn as a marker to indicate it is a true-to-type fruit. When mature and sprouted and planted, this seed will produce a plant that is true-to-type.
Materials: Pollination bags: https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/sss006
How to Propagate True-to-Type by Stem Cuttings Mirlitons:
True-to-type mirlitons can also be grown from stem cuttings (vegetative propagation) which will ensure that the plant is a copy of the mother plant. Growing from cuttings is the normal way mirlitons are propagated in Latin America since it (1) ensures uniformity in plant characteristics from generation to generation and (2) cuttings, unlike fruit, are free. Vegetative propagation requires more time and work than controlled pollination, but if you are interested, see the instructions for stem cuttings on the photo page here.
Read the research article on cuttings at: https://www.mirliton.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Mirliton_Vine_Cuttings_Aricle.pd
(Special thanks to Dr. Joe Willis of the LSU AgCenter for his indispensable contributions to this article.)
Male flowers first emerging and opening in clusters.
Unopened female.
Female with opened flower.
Collecting pollen from male.
Brush with pollen on tip.
Dabbing pollen onto female.
Dropped petals on female indicate it was successfully pollinated.
A pollination bag is used to protect female flowers from cross-pollination.
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