Sechium Species, Chayote, Cho Ko, Cho-Cho, Mirliton, Vegetable Pear 'Spiny-fruited'

Blooms...Bloooooms...BLOOMS every where fragrant blooms...not a single fruit. The vine is a bit aggressive and when trimming it back the ...Read Moresap can be irritating to those sensitive to it. It does make me itch when the white sap sits too long on my skin but never a blister or a rash, so far anyway. You must need 2 of these to get fruit...I don't know, wish I did?

this will be my first year growing it but ive been eating it all my life. very good in soups. it is used a lot for cooking (fruits, leave...Read Mores and roots) in soups in my home country El Salvador.

I enjoy eating chayote and have quite a few recipes for it. Let me know if interested I can send them to you. I wrote a small article a...Read Morebout them a few years ago. In my native Cuba, my mom made a sweet stuffed chayote, but it was eaten as a side dish and not dessert...Yummy!

One of my co-community gardeners grows the spiny form of this vine. It is perennial here, produces very heavily each year and grows to a...Read Moren enormous size, covering whatever is nearby. The fruit get quite large. If you grow it, invest in a very sturdy trellis. Some of the folks in the garden are not so fond of it, due to the fact it tends to spill over the gardener's allotted space and is not particularly attractive.

The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. Raw, texture and flavor are similar to a slightly sweet and starchy, but, much firmer cucumber. I haven't tried cooking it yet, though, I would guess it to be similar to Winter Melon (slightly nutty; but, the sort of thing that primarily soaks up the flavor of whatever you are cooking it in.)