There's a plant that I tried growing last year. I heard about it from our editor-in-chief

on the blog Lauren on the Epic Gardening team and she actually sent down some stars

for both myself and Jacques to try. It's called Cheyote Squash and I have to be honest

with you. I did not have my best year growing it, always an experiment at the Epic Garden,

but we have Dr. Lance Hill on the podcast who's the founder and former executive director

of Tulane University's Southern Institute for Education and Research who has an absolute

wealth of knowledge on this particular plant. So Lance, I'm really excited to have you

on the show. I'm honored and excited about being on it too, Kevin.

Thank you so much. Yeah, so here's what I know and to be honest, I'm not very educated

on this plant. I know that and I know it as Cheyote Squash. I know there may be other names

for it and I know that at least what I was instructed to do was to bury the Squash itself

and then let it train up something and I know in another episode we're going to get into

growing and I figured maybe we should start out with how this plant came to be in the

USA. The Cheyote was domesticated in Mesoamerica and it actually, it's a cute

curb it. So it's in the same family as other squashes and cute combers and so on. But

about 28 million years ago, as they say in botany, give a plus four billion years that

it broke off into its own species and it was domesticated several thousand years ago

in Mesoamerica and spread throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and then it ended

up in the United States eventually by way of the migrations primarily from Haiti. But

it is a fundamental part of the food culture of Mexico and with some 40 million people

of Mexican heritage of Santa in this country, there is a connection to Cheyote that is very

similar in Louisiana with the connection is to what we call melaton spelled M-I-R-L-I-T-O-N.

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