Quote:
Originally Posted by Pancrazio
Hats to you for trying to grow a papaya. I gave up two winters ago. They simply can't stand to remain stationary during winter. Usually it does begin with some leaf loss and its a downhill from there. It's a pity because during summer they do grow well, and if they were somehow earlier in bearing they could be grown as veggies. But so far i haven't heard of anything so precocious to be fruited in a single season, and as i said, they are almost impossible to overwinter.
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Yes the papayas are difficult to overwinter. Like you said, they cant stand to remain dormant, so the trick is to not let them. You have to keep them warm and allow them to at least grow some. I'm going to start some more seeds from a store bought fruit soon, I think the trick is to start them in the heat of summer so they don't dampen off, overwinter them under lights so they're maybe 3 feet tall by spring, then transplant up and hope things work out, they really grow a tremendous amount even during our short summers, just have to make sure the tap root doesn't get bound/tangled. If tap root is stunted, so is the whole plant. Look into abnshrek's threads on his red lady papaya, he's almost got it dialed in perfectly now. My growing season is 2 months less here though so I have to have a bit more growth before the second year. This last wave of papayas I had tried to get shorter plants by keeping them root bound but it just stunted the plants and so I didn't get much from anything except the one in the largest pot, which got killed by sun burn this year. The two kept in smaller pots that got scorched by the sun also are doing some neat things since I transplanted them. They won't be anything, and I'll toss them at the end of this season but neat none the less.
Smallest one decided to branch into two.
Other one is jumping into gear.
Hermi?
