chayote blues

Something bad is happening to my chayote. This whole chayote business has been an ongoing test for me. First I couldn’t get any seeds, and then they wouldn’t sprout and then wouldn’t take and now my pride and joy which was doing ever so well snaking up a pretty pyramidal bamboo trellis is turning yellow and dropping lower leaves, like every lower leaf. It’s gone from a shiny green pyramid to a naked tangle of vines and higher leaves. I’m at a loss. It says in the books it grows best at middle elevations but that it will grow anywhere. It looked at first like only leaves with insect damage were turning, but no, they are all going. I think I’ll lose it. Sad. The vines supposedly live for 5 years or so, maybe it’ll come back, I hope so, I am very fond of the plant, fonder of the plant than I am of the fruit which takes the skin off my hands when I peel it.
Other than that the garden is coming along. Despite rain I managed to transplant the second generation of tomatoes, 3 melons, the jackfruit and a couple of papayas. I’ve sowed the third generation of pumpkin. And today I finally got a cucumber with a nice supply of healthy looking seeds. The red bananas I harvested three whole weeks ago are finally ripe and almost ready to eat, I think I’ll wait a couple of weeks before I harvest the next bunch, there’s no sense them hanging in the box when they could be hanging on the plant. I took three more pineapple which I’ll dry, they smell fabulous and I’m so enjoying the last batch I dried.