If you have a curiosity to get into Chayote this season, which is a, you know, really

a fantastic, fun vegetable to grow, then I think this is going to be a great episode

because I certainly do. I'd like to give it another try. As I mentioned last spring, I

did not have the best time growing it or spring into summer. I did get a vine, but I did

not really get subsequent Chayote squash to harvest and eat. So here we have Dr. Lance Hill

back on the shows, the founder and former executive director of Tulane University's Southern

Institute for Education and Research, and also the creator of melaton.org, which is in

the podcast description, a huge resource for growing Chayote. So, you know, Lance, I don't

know what I did wrong. So maybe we should start with variety selection. I think to me as

a grower, a lot of it is about variety selection, because if you choose the wrong variety

for your region, you're sort of already, you've already dug yourself a hole.

Exactly. The most important step toward becoming a Chayote or melaton grower is to get the

right variety. And the reason why is because most of the varieties that you see in the grocery

store are grown at 5,000 to 8,000 feet altitude. If you take that variety and try to put it at

sea level, it won't work. It's acclimated to that altitude, to the UVB in the mountains

because these tend to be maintained forests and the valleys. And the varieties, one of the

problems is this, people understand that you can grow a Chayote that you could pick up at the

grocery store, produce. Now, there's not a lot of produce that you can grow. There's some things

you can. I threw some potatoes away the other day and they're growing in my yard now. But there's

a lot of misinformation on the internet and it says, it tells people if you want to grow a Chayote,

you buy one in the store, it'll sprout and you plant it. That's comparable to saying, if you want

to grow beans, plant a can of green beans in your yard. It won't work. Now, what variety do we have

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