How to Grow Chayote: Plant the Whole Fruit

Two things make chayote unlike anything else in the vegetable garden: you plant the whole fruit, and it will not flower until the days shorten, however big it gets.

Why the fruit is the seed

Chayote contains one large flat seed, fused to the surrounding flesh, and it does not separate out in any useful way. It is also viviparous — the seed frequently germinates while still inside the fruit, which is why supermarket chayotes sometimes arrive with a shoot already pushing out of the broad end.

So the planting unit is the entire fruit.

Sprouting and planting

1. Leave the fruit somewhere warm and dark — a cupboard, a paper bag — until a shoot emerges. Several weeks is normal
2. Do not bury it. Plant on its side at a slight angle, sprouting end up, with about a third of the fruit above the soil
3. Warm soil, after all frost danger has passed
4. Rich, free-draining ground with plenty of compost worked in
5. Full sun
6. Space plants 3 m apart if growing more than one. They need it

In short-season regions, start the sprouting fruit in a large pot indoors in late winter, so the vine is already substantial when it goes out. That head start is often the difference between a crop and a very large green sculpture.

The trellis problem

This is where chayote surprises people. A single plant commonly produces nine to twelve metres of growth in one season, and a mature fruiting vine is heavy.

The overhead frame used in its native range is worth copying: the weight is carried in compression by posts rather than by a vertical panel, and the fruit hangs below where it is easy to see and pick.

The short-day problem, which is the real limit

Chayote is a short-day plant. It sets flowers in response to day length falling, not in response to reaching a certain size or age.

The consequence in a temperate garden:

• The vine grows enormously through June and July
• It sets nothing
• Flowering begins as days shorten, late August or September
• Fruit needs several more weeks to develop
• Frost arrives

That sequence is why chayote has a reputation for being easy to grow and hard to harvest. The countermeasures:

• Start indoors in late winter so the vine is mature when the trigger comes
• Choose the warmest, most sheltered site you have
• Grow in a large container that can be moved under cover in autumn
• Protect from early frost with fleece — often buying the final two or three weeks needed
• In zones 8 and warmer, the plant may survive the winter and crop far more reliably in its second year

Growing on

• Water consistently. A vine that size transpires heavily
• Mulch to hold moisture and keep the roots cool
• Feed moderately — too much nitrogen produces more vine and no fruit at all, which is the last thing this plant needs
• Pinch the growing tips once it has filled the structure, to encourage side shoots
• Expect nothing until autumn, and do not conclude it has failed in July

Harvest and storage

Pick fruit at tennis-ball size or a little larger, while the skin is still tender and before the seed hardens. A productive vine yields a great many — 50 or more from a single plant in a good year, which is another thing worth knowing before planting three.

Chayote stores well: several weeks at room temperature, longer somewhere cool, and far better than most summer squash.

And keep one back. A mature fruit saved from your own vine is next year’s plant, which makes this one of the few vegetables where the seed cost falls to zero after the first season.