This male Carica Papaya germinated after the hard freeze we had in Feb., I've given it Maxicrop, liquid seaweed, and Maxicrop liquid fish a few times, plus a little 16-0-8 a few times, but this is massive it's 8 feet tall, and you can see its girth, Ed
And
its so pretty!!! can it withstand frost verry well??
When the get older, they will come back from a hard freeze, Ed
Do you need more than one papaya tree to be able to get fruit?
I am lucy enough to have a couple of hermaphroditic ones, but yes the one in the photo is a male, and it will bare no fruit, Ed
how can you tell if the papaya ia a male/female/hermaphrodite?????
Male have long drooping flowers, female have short fay flowers, close to the stem, hermaphrodites, as far as I can tell, look just like females, but produce fruit with no male present, I will take a few photos, seeds from hermaphrodites produce about 60 to 70% hermaphroditic plants, the curious thing is, it all started 6 years ago, when watering the lawn, I noticed along the edge of the woods in two different places, about 30 feet apart, two seedlings that I immediately recognized as Papaya plants, the birds had dropped both of the seeds, and I am not in a subtropical climate here, although some years we go two or even three years without a hard freeze, and I have seen no other Papaya around close by, anyhow, after less than a year, it was apparent that these were not only producing fruit without a male, they were two different variety, one was Carica, or Mexican, and the other was Hawaiian, you could tell by the shape of the fruit, I've had the Carica for six years now, the Hawaiian didn't make it through the hard freeze this year it tried to come back is the spring, but the damage this year was just too great, and it soon died off, the Carica is doing great, and has many new branches, and I have tons of four foot seedlings, from seeds that I broadcast, last year in the fall, ( a lot of them), Ed
Here are some photos the first one is a male, the second two photos, are of female flowers, Ed
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wow thats awsome. they're such neat lookin plants. i just bought some circa papaya seeds. iv never seen one in the san francisco bayarea at all. so mabye ill be the first, or mabye i will fail miserably! who knows. haha. so should i sow them now and let them grow indoors over winter? and how lond does it take for the tree to start producing flowers??? =)
Gotta do them outside, 4 months at the most, and they'll start to flower, they will take 32 degrees, without much damage, and older plants will come back from a real cold spell, but if it gets below 32 every year where you live, I would wait till March, Ed
well ill try planting a couple on the patio close to the house where it doesnt get too cold...and it doesnt realy get that cold that often here anyhow. so i guess i will just see what happens!
