Once you have the sprouts coming from the fruit, why not just put the sprouted fruit directly in the soil and skip the water step? Sometimes when you root plants in water, they are slow to adapt to growing in soil, as you learned with last year's plant. You need to put it in the soil as soon as it barely sprouts at all. If you wait too long, the new plant may struggle.

With the one that already is a half-foot vine, it may be harder to get it to adjust to soil than it will be with the smaller one. Sometimes if you have a plant rooting in water, it will struggle when it is moved to soil and I don't know any way to avoid that other than to root it in soil from the start and to not put it in water in the first place.

Thanks Dawn. By now you should know I'm a dumb a.
The reason for the water is because I read it off the internet from some chayote person.
Since I failed last year I'm determined to grow this no matter if it takes me several years or even if I get squash or not.
I'm on a mission.
Tree

Tree, No, you are not a dumb a. There's nothing wrong with seeing someone else's methods on the internet and trying them. If it works for them, it might work for you, right? Having said that, the traditional way to start chayote is to let the seeds sprout in the fruit and then put them in soil. I assume it is the traditional method because it works.

Good luck with the chayote.

If you have a compost pile, you could try growing one in it. Sprout it indoors and as soon as it has sprouts, stick it in the compost pile. It will develop a monster plant size that will produce oodles of chayote fruit a few months later.

Dawn

You really don't turn water roots in to dirt roots. You hope, the future plant will make dirt roots before the water roots all die.

Best scenario is to plant as soon as the tiniest rootlets appear. This means, before they think, they are water roots.

:)

Moni