Growing chokos

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Cosmic, Jul 26, 2007.

  1. Cosmic

    Cosmic Junior Member

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    What's the best way to get chockos established. Over the years they have failed for me due to rats then drought. The rats kept eating the new shoots and a ended up with this lump of choko base.

    I have another batch to try once again and want to know the best way to plant them. I have the whole choko with the stem starting to grow out of one of them and waiting for the rest. I planted one half submerged in soil and it seems to have sent down roots.

    Which way should I plant them and do they like full or half sun.
    As a child we had a vine growing on the shady side of the house and I remember it was there for years. Is this what they like?
    I can't believe I am havinig such a hard time growing this sometimes weed!
     
  2. disorderly

    disorderly Junior Member

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    hi cosmic,

    I dont see a location in your profile so its difficult to give specific advise.
    The choko is a bit like passionfruit really.In warmer areas it can be be incredibly prolific once established.It needs some type of trellis,shed ,chookpen,sacrificial trees or plants to grow madly upon.
    For a family one vine would suffice so I would suggest that you make some sort of rodent proof barrier so the they cannot chew on the sprouting/rooting fruit and its new shoots.
    They love full sun,however when the old fruit is just sprouting cover with a bit of mulch or anything really so the fruit itself doesnt get sunburnt.
    Our family is currently enjoying heaps of lovely fresh chokos from the offspring of an original plant which I killed a couple of years ago.It made babies and I have attacked them also to try and keep them under control.
    It's a favourite vege of mine!
    Hope this helps.

    Scott

    Scott
     
  3. hedwig

    hedwig Junior Member

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    I would suggest planting two vines, because they die in drought.
    Why don't you protect them somehow from the rats with fine Wiremesh ?
    Or perhaps you grow them in a pot were the rats don't reach and if the vine is big enough plant it out. (I think the outer part is interesting for the rats) Or I heard that you can plant the inner seed only to make it less attractive for the rats.
     
  4. Cosmic

    Cosmic Junior Member

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    Oh, the rats aren't a problem now as we moved and go a cat. Woolloongabba had the rats.
    I am in Brisbane.
     
  5. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    I always plant the whole fruit (seed) slightly under the soil (fairly nutrient rich soil is best but they do ok in fairly poor soil), with just the vine sticking out, then add a little mulch and water quite well while establishing. I strongly doubt they'd transplant well from a pot.

    Make sure they have a good strong trellis (or plant them carefully at the base of a vigorous, healthy, non-coniferous tree - I've used two choko vines on opposite sides at the base of an old cut back mango before with great success), because a good choko vine will grow at least 5-6m upwards and even then some of the leaders will head back to the ground and you may well have to prop them up once they're heavy with fruit. Unlike most things which can grow that high, the fruit you can't reach is undamaged by falling from the vine.

    It's very bullet proof once established. They enjoy full sun, but will grow with a little shade - just a little more sparsely.

    Even with one good vine you'll probably have more than you can eat, but they're a good thickening vegie for a range of dishes, plus they make a ripper chutney base and have uses in numerous other preserves...even desserts.

    Pretty wonderful, flexible, tough and dead easy to grow vegie IMO.
     
  6. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    We have a separate kitchen from our house, the kitchen an open air affair with a wide overhanging roof, and our house has an open first floor, to allow breezes to pass through, but is shaded from the sun, and most rain.

    Between the two buildings we have made a small patio, out of stone, which got warm! Hoping to cool that area off, I installed a trellis between the two buildings, using the facia boards on the skirt roof of the house, and the edge of the roof on the kitchen.

    I built some raised beds from stones I collected in the river, filled the beds with alluvial soil, composted chicken bedding with manure and bamboo leaves, guinea pig manure, and planted out tomatoes, a cherry tomato that had volunteered in our dry season garden thet gets flooded every year. The raised beds are on opposint sides of the patio, so growth is towards the center (though some has disappeared up into a large velvet apple tree).

    The tomatoes did really well, growing so high that they grew into the trellis. They lasted almost a year, and died. My daughter, Esperanza, bought up a few ch-chos (what they call choko or sechium edule in Belize), and the plants took off.

    Like Jez says, we planted them by putting them shallowly into the soil, mulching the fuit, but allowing the vine to access light.

    Right now the patio is %80 shaded, like an open air room with a green roof. We have some passion fruit that Richard in Maui sent us (thank you), and we would like to add them into the equation at some time (they have fruited, but not been harvested, yet). This would be more suitable for providing the shade we are looking for.

    Our choko doesn't die back completely every year, because I irrigate those raised beds right through our dry season. I also add in compost and guinea pig manure now and again, and dump our urine buckets into them once or twice a month.

    We eat choko regularly, and while you can do lots of things with it, my favourite thing is to simply quarter them and boil them with a pinch of salt, eating them plain. My wife likes to section them up and cook them in stir fries.

    You can see some hopelessly out of date pictures of the trellis and patio, and kitchen, at https://mmrfbz.org/sitefacilities.html. Three photos at the bottom of the page show our kitchen and patio.

    Right now, there is another long raised bed, and the trellis is full. We need to update our web site, but we lack a camera.

    Anyway, everything said here about choko is true: it is a great food, easy to grow, wonderfully productive, versatile, and well worth any efforts to cultivate.

    Oh, BTW, try a wire cage around the base of the choko, using rabbit wire. Allow it to be built so it can be disassembled easily once established. The rats may want the tuber that is formed underground (from which regenerative sprouts grow annually). A good cage may limit their access.

    Good luck!
     
  7. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    cosmic,

    depends where you are in the world mate?

    but here in aus' except maybe for the far northern tropics and i am in the sub tropics of s.e qld it is way too early to be thinking of planting choko's out, mine are in pots as they developed to the point of needing that process but i figure on not planting them out until there is no chance of frost which could be as alte as around mid september, i'll play it by ear towards the end of august at the earliest.

    the further down south you go unless you have a suitable micro-climate then the later the planting could be, and if you keep around the root run heavily mulched the soil will stay warm enough to keep the root ball viable for a second season.

    chokos love water as i have found over the years.

    len
     
  8. Cosmic

    Cosmic Junior Member

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    Oh Christoper, I love your house!! I want a house just like it! Can't wait to be out of the city.
    I am in Brisbane. I think we may have had some frost . I have little experience with frost but a patch of my garden has died off for no reason. The native passionfruits died, even grass too, which I consider an annoying weed.
    Is this frost?
    Last winter my partner spotted ice on the ground in the morning. I have never seen such a thing.
     
  9. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    sounds like frost cosmic,

    it does happen.

    might be also you ahd a black frost which i think most of us would ahve experienced on or a day either side of the 19th of this month a thursday when we had it and it was preceeded & followed by a pretty evident white frosts, a black frost occurs and you don't actually see it just that everything goes black from being burnt it is the worst of frosts, very hard to combat it can occur anywhere from midnight on and happens with the passing cold front.

    so what the black didn't kill the white finished off, the brassicas loved it.

    so back to your chokos wait until late august at the earliest go with the feeling as frosty conditions can occur into the middle of september. if you want i can let you know when i think it is safe enough for us to put ours in and you can follow suite but only if you want.

    mine are in pots as i said earlier and right by the water tanks where they get the morning sun and the warmth of the tank keeps the chill away.

    len
     
  10. hedwig

    hedwig Junior Member

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    Hi Cosmic, I'm in Brisbane too, Coopers Plains. We had a choko in our old house in Taringa and it gre like mad. The only thing they don't like is drought.
    Our chokokos now are too small still to tell anyting. And we had always the problem that most chokos grew in our neighbours garden, if they would at least have used them!!
     
  11. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Hi Cosmic,

    Thank you. Our house and kitchen were labours of love, taking five years to build the house, and the kitchen was sort of part time, for a year. We both like building, and I obsessively collect stone from the river.

    Ice on the ground would be frost. Cold weather would be frost, too. It can happen late at night, or in the early morning, so you miss the actual event, but not the consequences.

    If you get frost, and it sounds like you do, your options are limited for things like choko and passionfruit. Maybe a north facing wall, well protected from the wind, or other microclimate would help.

    Good luck!

    Christopher
     
  12. hooroo

    hooroo Guest

    I think people confuse with what is said about a growing choko and what a choko does first year.
    it's just establishing, forget the vines, it's the roots, if you leave it for next year it'll produce well, third year just try and stop it!
    i'm in victoria and am amazed to hear sub-tropical folk have trouble with them when mine are under little mulch with no sunlight reaching the cold soil.
    infact that's one of the things i recommend to friends, plant them in ever shady ground where they can climb into sunlight, works everytime.
    haven't planted a new choko for 4 or 5 years here.
     
  13. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Good point, Horoo! We seldom need to plant as the tuber keeps throwing new vines every year, even the ones that die back all the way.
     

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