Papayas in Our Yard

Papaya plants can be male, female, or bisexual, and you want to make sure that you have some females or bisexual plants amongst your seedlings. The male papayas don't bear fruit.

Three years ago, we returned to Mexico and discovered that our friend Wanda Folden had planted a papaya tree in our yard. Not knowing the sex of the tree, we had to wait a year to see if it might bear fruit. As it turned out, we have a bisexual tree and it is bearing an abundant supply of fruit!

Papayas are fast growing, single stem plants. The trunk is soft and does not have a bark, and papayas don't have branches.

The leaves are huge and don't last long. Usually you have a tall trunk with a crown of leaves at the top of it. The overall appearance is a bit like a palm tree.

Last year we picked our first papaya but it was too green and bitter. This photo shows our first, tree-ripened papaya.

And unfortunately, this photo shows what can happen to an unprotected, tree-ripened papaya from birds, fruit bats and possums, all of which we have here.

If you pick the papaya a couple of days early, it will continue to ripen on your kitchen counter but it can be a little bitter. The fruit sweetens as it ripens on the tree and does not sweeten ripening on your counter.

As this hole in the fruit appeared overnight, I suspect fruit bats although we do see possums in the yard pretty frequently too.

Not wanting to grow papayas just to feed the wildlife, I made a cage of chicken wire around the fruit.

You can see the lowest hanging and largest papaya on the tree beginning to ripen.

Once the fruit begins to ripen it can change from green to yellow-orange within a couple of days. You want to wait until at least 80% of the colour has changed. If you pick it too soon, it will be bitter. If you leave it too late, it will become mushy.  Picking is easy; simply grab hold of the papaya and twist it a little to break it off of the stem connecting it to the trunk.

These two papayas ripened on the tree two days apart.  We picked them when the colour was close to 90% changed.

Apparently, the best way to finish off the ripening process is to then leave them on your kitchen counter for two days, then in the fridge for another 4 or 5 days before cutting them open to eat.

A perfectly ripened, sweet papaya!
The seeds can be saved, dried and planted.  Simply dig a hole about half a metre across, fill it half full with soil and compost, sprinkle your seeds across it and cover them with more soil and compost.  They usually take a couple of weeks to germinate.

The trees are short-lived, usually only about 3 years, so if you have the room, it's a good idea to have some new ones always growing to replace the older ones.

Papaya trees can get all sorts of diseases but the most common problem is root rot from over-watering.   They need a lot of water but make sure the soil is well-drained (ours is planted right in the sand) and give it large drinks of water every few days, giving the soil time to drain before watering again. They also require a lot of nutrients so fertilize them regularly.

Our favourite thing to use papayas for is fruit smoothies.  Here you can see the ripe, juicy papaya being cut up into smaller pieces to drop into the blender.

A bowl of fresh cut papaya, ready to blenderize for our morning fruit smoothies.

Rather than using ice cubes to make a cold, thick smoothie, we simply use frozen bananas so that the smoothie isn't diluted with water.

We dropped a bunch of cut up papaya into the bottom of the blender then blenderized it for a few seconds before adding cut up frozen bananas on top.

Adding some pineapple juice for a third fruit flavour.

And now some soy milk (I'm allergic to whey and caseine in regular cow's milk).

Simply blenderize for a couple of minutes until thick and smooth.

And you have a fantastic Papaya, Banana, Pineapple fruit smoothie!

We have also frozen the cut up papaya then blenderized it with fresh mango.  The possibly combinations are endless, and all delicious!