50 Sometimes bees and other pollinators are not doing their job and you want to ensure that your female flowers are pollinated. 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 on each photo in this link to read the instructions. The post Hand Pollinating Mirlitons appeared first on Mirliton ..read more

Mirliton leaf infected with anthracnose. Unlike powdery mildew which yellows uniformly and wilts the leaves, anthracnose starts as yellow wedges between the leaf veins. It then turns the leaf tissue brown and leaves with a distinctive “shot hole.” Anthracnose is a summer disease caused by many fungi, but the pathogen that affects mirlitons is Colletotrichum lagenarium. For the purposes of this article, I will call Colletotrichum lagenarium the “anthracnose fungus. It is a chronic problem with mirlitons and it’s the main reason plants die the first year. There is no known synthetic or biologi ..read more

Up until about 2020, any mirliton grown in Louisiana was an heirloom mirliton. They were 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. The mirliton landrace is easy to recognize because of its distinctive fruit traits; they are large, slightly pe ..read more

Growers normally try to delay mirliton sprouting by putting new fruit in paper bags and storing them somewhere cool. But if you get a winter or spring crop, you may want to get them quickly sprouted so they can be directly planted. Here’s an “incubation” trick that Joseph Boudreaux of Broussard taught me that speeds up sprouting.   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. The warmer the better. In a sense, you are incubating the fruit since cooler outside temperatures promote dormancy and prevent sprou ..read more

  There has never been a scientific study for home gardeners on how to best fertilize mirlitons,   so get to invent the science ourselves.  In the growers guide that I wrote several years ago, I recommended  8-24-24 fertilizer. I don’t advocate that anymore. If you are going to use a chemical fertilizer, old-fashioned 8-8-8 or MIracleGro are fine. 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: &nb ..read more

      We experienced a drought in the spring of 2022 that contributed to the death of many first-year mirlitons. That’s because normally rainfall is frequent enough that growers don’t have to be concerned with watering, but the drought brought out the hoses and many plants were drowned or died of stress-induced diseases. Mirliton growers in Brazil long ago took the guesswork out of determining exactly how much available moisture lies below the surface. They use an inexpensive “soil sampler” which allows them to take a core sample of their gardens/fields and see and touch the so ..read more

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. Dig a pit, if you need it.   Mirli ..read more

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.    As you may know, we recommend that you overwinter your mirliton in a 3-gallon container filled with potting soil, which will enable you to transplant the plant in the spring with a healthy rootball. 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 i ..read more

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 arrived sprouted, or you sprouted it yourself, you are ready to overwinter it to help it develop a root ball. Fig. 2. Sprout first emerging (above) and shoot 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 f ..read more

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 […] The post Squirrel Repeller That Works appeared first on Mirliton ..read more