Not only does the Chayote have certain preferences regarding how much water it receives, but it also cares deeply about how you provide that water. In fact, if you don't use the proper watering technique, you risk harming your tomatoes. The best way to water Chayote is to apply the water directly to the soil in a slow and gentle manner. You should not pour all of the water into the soil at once, and you should not do overhead watering for your Chayote. Although you should water slowly, you should also water deeply to ensure that all of the soil in which your Chayote grows is sufficiently moist.

If you find that you have overwatered your Chayote and you are concerned about the associated risk of disease, you should intervene immediately. Often the best approach for an overwatered Chayote is to uproot it from its current growing location. Once the plant is out of the ground, you can allow its roots to dry a bit before planting it in a new growing location. Ensure that the new growing location has soil with good drainage. If you grow in pots, you may also want to move your plant to a pot with more or larger drainage holes. In the case of underwatering, all you will need to do is increase the frequency with which you supply water to your plant.

Overall, Chayote requires a significant amount of water throughout the growing season. To meet that high water need, you'll need to water early and often throughout the spring and summer. During the earlier parts of the growing season, you should water your Chayote about once or twice per week. As the season progresses, you should increase your watering frequency. You may need to water it twice per day or more during summer, depending on the weather. After your Chayote have gone through their major seasonal growth phases, you can reduce the frequency of your watering to about once per week until the end of the growing season.

Since Chayote are incredibly popular, with many professional and amateur gardeners growing them successfully, we have a pretty clear idea of how to care for these plants. That understanding includes specific knowledge about the precise volume of water an average Chayote should receive. Generally, Chayote will require about 1 - 1.5 inches of water per week. That volume should be dispersed evenly through your weekly watering. As the weather gets warmer, you may need to supply more water, but in most cases, two inches per week is a good baseline amount.

Underwatering and overwatering can both occur as problems for your Chayote, and both these problems can manifest with similar symptoms. For example, foliage discoloration and wilting can both result from either overwatering or underwatering. When your Chayote is underwatered, its leaves will be curling and drooping at the beginning. You will see a bunch of leaves turn less vigorous. Underwatering is also likely to cause stunted growth and poor overall development as both the flowers and this plant require a high amount of water. Overwatering is more likely to lead to disease, including rot. Overwatering may also lead to unpleasant smells rising from your plant's soil. The symptoms of underwatering will show up quicker than overwatering. Overwatering can also be evident in soil conditions. Mainly, if you notice a lot of standing water or waterlogged soils, overwatering is likely to occur.

As alluded to above, your Chayote's water needs will repeatedly change throughout the seasons. During most of spring and summer, you should water your Chayote about once every week. As the heat of summer arrives, you should plan to increase your watering frequency to once or twice per day. In the late summer and fall, towards the end of the harvest period, you can reduce your watering frequency to about once per week. After harvest has ended, you can cease watering as your Chayote has reached the end of its life cycle and will require no further soil moisture. The maintenance schedule of Chayote will require you to alter the amount of water you provide depending on the plant's current growth stage. Early on, especially if you grow your Chayote from seeds, you'll need to provide water often enough to maintain consistent soil moisture, which encourages root development. When the plant becomes old enough to produce flowers, it will likely need even more water. During the fruit development growth stage, your Chayote will likely need the most water out of any growth period, at times requiring water more than twice per day. Following that phase, the water needs of Chayote will decline significantly.

Whether you grow Chayote indoors or outdoors can also play a role in how you water them. Chayote that grows outdoors may receive water from natural rainfall, which will reduce the amount of supplemental water you should supply. However, it is incredibly rare for rainfall to adequately replace your watering entirely. Plants that grow indoors, along with any Chayote that grows in a container, will need to be watered more frequently than those that grow in the ground outdoors. If you choose this route, please make sure that the plant gets enough water by checking the soil moisture within your pot often to keep your Chayote healthy.

When growing the Chayote, pruning will be one of your main maintenance tasks. The main role pruning plays for the Chayote is similar to the role it would play for any other plant, whether fruiting or not—to remove any stems or foliage that are dead, damaged, or show signs of disease. Pruning also helps prevent this plant from becoming overgrown. Additionally, pruning can help encourage a stronger overall form and has an impact on fruit production. Along with those benefits, pruning can increase air circulation through this plant’s foliage, which will help prevent moisture-related diseases.

The best time to prune the Chayote is during the late winter or early spring. During the winter, your plant will be in a dormant phase and will hold all of the growth that remains from the previous growing season. Removing stems and branches at this time gives the Chayote a better chance of allocating the entirety of its growing energy towards the most important parts of the plant rather than sending energy to damaged parts of the plant that are declining already. Pruning early in spring is also a good idea because you will not remove any of the season’s flower buds. Pruning away the buds will reduce the blooms and the overall number of fruits this plant can produce.

Before you begin pruning your Chayote, you must equip yourself with the best tools for the job. Ideally, you should use a pair of hand pruners or loppers that have been recently sharpened. Your tools should also be as sterile as possible to prevent the spread of disease. Once you have the right tools, you should start pruning by cutting out any dead or broken branches. You should also remove any part of the plant that shows signs of disease. Throughout the entire process, you should keep one main trunk intact. Also, at no point should you remove more than one-third of this plant’s mass. You can perform some light pruning during this plant's fruiting period as well. At this time, it is best to remove any tertiary vines that hold no fruits or fruits that are small and unlikely to develop and ripen before the season ends. Both pruning methods help this plant allocate most of its energy towards its best fruits.

In many instances, you won’t need to do anything out of the ordinary at all after pruning your Chayote. These plants typically respond just fine to pruning and will heal their pruning wounds on their own with time. This is especially true if you did not remove more than one-third of this plant’s branches. With that said, there are some ways that you can encourage your Chayote to recover more quickly from pruning cuts. The main way is to apply some fertilizer to the soil. Applying fertilizer will give your passionfruit plant plenty of soil nutrients with which it can produce more healthy growth. It is also wise to be careful about how you water this plant just after pruning. Getting water on the pruning cuts can easily spread disease, including rot.

The Chayote is not the most long-lived plant, especially when it goes without proper maintenance or experiences a frost. However, in either case, there is a way that you can use pruning to bring this plant back to its former health. Rejuvenation pruning involves removing almost all of this plant’s vines, with the exception of a few main vines. This practice is similar to the pruning you use to train a brand new Chayote. After performing rejuvenation pruning, your Chayote should begin to sprout new growth, and if you adopt a proper maintenance routine, that new growth will lead to a healthy and productive plant.

The primary season in which to prune Chayote is the late winter or early spring. At that time, you can make your pruning cuts just before or just after the new growth has emerged. If your plant is very young, early spring is the time to shape and train its primary vines and overall form. If your plant is mature, early spring is the time that you should remove dead, damaged, and diseased parts of this plant. You may also perform some light pruning during the summer. When pruning in summer, your main goal should be to thin out unnecessary new shoots and lighten the canopy. Summer pruning can also include the removal of any leaves that are yellowing or show signs of disease. Lightening the canopy by pruning out some foliage will allow more light to reach the fruits and flowers and will improve air circulation.

The age and current growth phase of your Chayote will influence the way you should prune it. When you have a new Chayote, your first pruning goal should be to train this plant into the correct initial shape. That shape includes a single main trunk that will thicken over time. The best way to achieve this is to cut this plant back to only its strongest vines during its second or third growing season. You also want to encourage a few secondary branches that emerge from the top and sides of the main trunk. These secondary branches will be responsible for growing fruits. Once you have developed this main form and your plant has established itself with continued healthy growth, you can proceed to maintenance pruning, which mainly includes removing dead and declining branches each year during spring.

Exact needs vary, but a minimum of 6 to 8 hours per day is a good rule of thumb for Chayote to grow and produce fruit.

Chayote requires full sun, meaning that it should be grown in a location that gets direct sunlight that isn’t blocked by obstacles such as trees, fences, or buildings. In general, the faster the plant grows, the more hours of sunlight it will need. Morning sun is best for photosynthesis.

Chayote should not need to be protected from the sun in most climates. Those who live in a desert or near the equator may find that the sun is too harsh for the types of plants they want to grow, but this is the exception.

All plants need sunlight to convert into energy. Plants that have a short growing season need even more light and energy than those that grow slowly, as they need to complete all their processes to grow and produce fruit within just a few months. The first symptoms of insufficient sunlight in Chayote are pale and yellow leaves that are not able to generate enough chlorophyll to keep their healthy green color. The leaves may eventually fall off, and new growth is small and weak. The plant may become leggy and sparse as it stretches toward the available light. Finally, without enough light the plant will not be able to produce large, high-quality edible leaves or fruit. Chayote needs to devote a lot of energy into growing leaves and fruits, so if there isn’t enough light available for it to convert, the harvest will suffer.

Chayote can get sunburned from intense sunlight, especially when coupled with high temperatures and not having enough water. Afternoon sun tends to be most likely to burn plants. Scalded leaves develop faded patches of light brown to white on the areas at the top of the plant that are exposed to the most sun. They are especially vulnerable to this right after being transplanted from a shadier location to being in full sun. Transitioning plants gradually or providing them with a barrier while they are adjusting can help prevent sunscald in young plants. In many cases, Chayote develops leaves that are large enough to protect fruits from the strongest rays of the sun. However, if intense sunlight is in contact with fruits, they can also be damaged. Avoid over-pruning those protective leaves so that the fruits don’t get burned.

Chayote may become unbalanced if it gets significantly more light on one side than the other. Ideally, you can plant your Chayote in a location away from obstacles that might block light, and where the distribution of sunlight is even on all sides. Be careful about planting tall species next to those that grow closer to the ground. It may not be obvious when the crops are first planted, but over time the taller plants may begin to block the amount of sunlight that can reach the shorter plants. Morning sun helps to dry dew and precipitation, which helps prevent infection from diseases that can develop when water sits on the plant. If you are watering or irrigating your Chayote, this should be done in the morning.

There is an ideal temperature range that makes Chayote feel at home. Under these temperature conditions, it's unlikely that you’ll have any issues with cold or hot damage to the foliage, but changing leaf colors can absolutely be a sign that Chayote isn’t happy. Try to keep your Chayote well within its preferred range of 70-85℉(21-30℃), but don’t panic if the temperature creeps up past 85℉(30℃) during the day or down to 70℉(21℃) at night.

If your Chayote happens to be planted outside, then there’s not much you can do to try to move it indoors. However, you can certainly provide cover in ways that will help it survive any extreme temperatures that may arise unexpectedly. For instance, you can always use a few stakes and some cloth to put together a shade tent that will block out much of the sun’s intense heat from direct sunlight exposure. Similarly, Chayote can be protected from the extreme cold and especially chilly winds by building a small greenhouse around the plant, which will create a greenhouse effect and warm the plant up. This can be done using garden stakes and any sort of clear or translucent plastic you may have around; if you have greenhouse plastic such as polycarbonate laying around, this works perfectly. Remove the greenhouse once temperatures warm up to 40℉(10℃) at night.

Generally speaking, Chayote needs to stay within its preferred temperature range all year long. However, that doesn’t mean that care should stay the same all year long. During the warmest months of the year, Chayote will need a little extra shade and a bit more of a breeze to help it cope with the hottest days. On the other hand, it may need to be moved away from chilly windows and doors during the cooler months in climates where temperatures drop below 40℉(10℃) at any point in the year.

Keeping your Chayote at the right temperature can be fairly simple. Depending on where you grow it, Chayote can be fairly easy to accommodate. For indoor growing, you can easily move the plant to different locations within your indoor space that best meet its temperature requirements. Avoid placing it near air conditioning vents, heaters, doors that open frequently, or drafty windows. It is a little more difficult to control the temperature around your Chayote if it’s grown outside. Of course, if it’s planted in a pot, you can simply bring it indoors when the temperatures outside get too hot or too cold for Chayote, but otherwise, you may need to take different measures to protect it from extreme heat or cold that may damage it irreversibly. Try placing Chayote under cover to protect from both the harsh sun that can overheat it and any cold wind that could be potentially deadly for your plant.

Naturally every type of plant requires nutrients to grow properly, but when we grow Chayote for its fruit, the harvest will be best if the soil is supplemented to provide more of what plants need. Each of the main macronutrients provides something different to plants. Phosphorus is the key nutrient that promotes the formation of flowers and fruit. Of course, a plant cannot produce flowers and fruit without a proper root system and healthy leaves to absorb sunlight, so the nutrients that support those parts of the plant are also necessary. Without enough of the necessary macronutrients, plants lack vitality, grow more slowly, and may wilt. Plants have to devote a lot of energy to flowering and fruiting, so if they are lacking in these main components that support their processes the resulting fruits will show that deficiency as well.

Chayote is a summer crop, and needs to be planted in the spring to produce fruits during the summer months. Check the specific variety to see when it should be planted. Chayote requires rich, fertile soil to yield high quality produce. Before planting, mix a 2 inch layer of compost or well-rotted manure into the soil. These materials add nutrients to the soil that can help kick-start growth for your Chayote, and also increase the drainage of the soil. Transplants can be fertilized immediately after planting, but seedlings should reach a height of 2 to 4 inches before being fertilized for the first time. For established plants, feed about every 3 to 4 weeks throughout the growing season, until the first frost or when the plant stops producing. Check the specific fertilizer type as well as the variety of Chayote to be sure that you are customizing your fertilization schedule to your situation. It is always better to fertilize less if you are not sure.

Avoid giving Chayote a fertilizer with too much nitrogen, since this can lead to development of plenty of leaves but not many blooms or fruits. Look for fertilizer with a lower level of nitrogen compared to other nutrients. Don’t fertilize Chayote when temperatures are high or when conditions are very dry. Doing so can cause the fertilizer to wash through the soil without being absorbed. Plants also have less ability to absorb nutrients during hot weather, which can allow the fertilizer to stay in the soil and prevent the plants from being able to take up water. This can be dangerous to plants during a drought or heatwave.

The best way to know what kind of fertilizer your Chayote needs is to first determine what is already plentiful in your soil and what might be lacking. The best way to understand this is to use a soil test to better understand your soil composition, although many people are able, through trial and error, to successfully grow Chayote without doing a test. You can find a commercial fertilizer specifically for almost any variety of Chayote, but it’s not necessary to purchase a different one for every vegetable you decide to grow. If you can determine their basic needs along with what is already available in your soil, you will be able to use the same fertilizer for many different plants. Many growers like to use a high-phosphorus fertilizer that supports flowers and fruits. High-phosphorus fertilizers are those that have an NPK ratio in which the middle number is highest, such as 8-32-16 or 10-30-10. That said, some people just use a balanced fertilizer such as 10-10-10 for all of their garden plants to keep things simple.

Different types of fertilizer will come with their own individual instructions, including the need to dilute some varieties or carefully measure out others. Be sure to follow these instructions carefully and do your research so you can avoid over fertilizing your garden. If your Chayote is planted in a row, the side-dressing method can be used to be sure that fertilizer reaches the roots but no fertilizer touches the plant itself. This method involves mixing the fertilizer into the soil along the rows on either side, about 3 to 4 inches away from the base of the plant. Water then washes the nutrients into the soil and down to the roots. If side-dressing does not work for the configuration of your garden, you can always apply your fertilizer to the soil around the plant, again staying about 3 to 4 inches away. Granular type fertilizers can be scattered onto the soil, then lightly mixed in to make sure they are incorporated where you want them. Water thoroughly after applying dry fertilizers. Liquid fertilizers are mixed into a watering can and the mixture is used to water and fertilize plants at the same time. Foliar feeding involves spraying the leaves with a specialized fertilizer mix instead of putting nutrients into the soil.

Over-fertilizing Chayote can lead to root burn and even the death of the entire plant in extreme cases. More often, the plant will develop a lot of lush green foliage, but the flowering and fruiting will be reduced. With more leaves, there is also the danger of inviting more pests that feed on your Chayote. It is possible to over-fertilize with both natural fertilizers or chemical fertilizers, although the latter is more common. Nitrogen is the most likely to cause problems but any nutrient in excess will cause similar problems. When using multiple types of fertilizer of soil amendment, make sure you understand everything that they will be introducing to your soil. If you add several different soil amendments that all contain the same nutrient, you could overdo it before you realize what has happened. Finally, it is important to avoid applying too much fertilizer as it can pollute groundwater. Unused nitrogen is not absorbed into the soil, so it can drain into nearby water sources and cause high concentrations of nitrates. High levels of nitrogen-nitrate are unhealthy for human and animal consumption, so it is very important to only use as much fertilizer as plants need.