Magnificent Seven Update

Back in March, I wrote about how Josh and I dug a big hole in the ground, and filled it with chopped-up banana plants and other compostable matter, and put some of the soil in a mound that partially encircles the hole, and added topsoil and manure onto the mound, and covered the whole thing with a thick layer of mulch from local tree crews. And about how when spring came, I planted seven small papayas on the mound, and staked them well so that the ring-tailed forest gods couldn't trample them on their nightly rounds.

What a difference three months can make! The middle three in this family portrait are Sunrise, one of the major commercial varieties in Hawaii. The tallest stands at least eight feet and already sports more than a dozen fruit. The right-hand two were sold as “from seeds from Costa Rica”. The two on the left are the rare broadleaf variety, grown from seeds that I got from Berto Silva when he spoke to the MRFC last year.

Here's the trunk on the largest Sunrise--- no need for staking now! Sunrise is known to be a tall, fast grower that produces relatively small-sized fruit. Given my healthy aversion to ladders, a tall variety was not a wise choice. But to look on the bright side, one of these days I'll get to write about techniques for topping papaya plants.

The Costa Ricans are slower-growing, and to this point only one carries a fruit. So far they look like ordinary papaya plants.

It's difficult to find much information about the broadleaf papayas. As best I can determine from online sources, they are a variety of the standard species, Carica papaya. Daley's in Australia touts the fruit  and says that only female and hermaphrodite specimens have been found. Several in the gang at Tropical Fruit Forum report that it's a slow grower, but though mine can't match the vigorous Sunrise, they are keeping up with the Costa Ricans. Some specimens have red petioles, but mine have only a reddish tinge. Unless Berto was very, very careful, mine could be outcrossings with ordinary varieties, but who knows?

Friends tell me that unprotected papayas sometimes end up with worms and sometimes not. I'll see how the unprotected fruits of each variety turn out, but I'm also trying some nylon bags from the Territorial Seed Company. They are fairly inexpensive and very easy to use. I'll let you know whether they actually work.

With any luck, I'll be able to report taste tests on these three varieties.