6 Tips How to Grow Papaya Perfectly in the Ground & Containers

g'day folks its rob here and today i'm chuffed to be able to bring you a clip on growing some papaya i've got six pointers that i've picked up recently that i'd like to share with you all that'll hopefully have all of us growing a ton of papaya before we know it now papaya is also known as poor port here in australia but as there's a native tree in north america that goes by the same name i'll be calling it papaya through this clip so tip number one has to be positioned it's the most important thing when it comes to papaya now they are a tropical plant so do keep in mind that they need to be grown in frost free areas and most of us don't live in the tropical climates so we need to get them out in the Sun where they're going to receive a lot of heat if you're in more cooler temperate areas definitely plant them in full Sun and the plants are going to love you for it if you can position them near some sort of a heat sink something like a brick wall retaining wall maybe a fence or even a water tank all the better the sun's going to come in the heat energy will be stored during the day and released at night so the plants will benefit from that situation so now we know where they like to grow we've got to think about what they're going to be sending their roots down into so soil is tip number 2 papaya really do like a free draining soil like most plants out there they don't like a lot of water sitting around the roots they're very susceptible to root rot as we found out recently when we lost one growing in a container that had very wet soil all the time now to try and I made the draining capabilities of your soil what you can do is add in organic matter it will have a three-fold effect it will feed the soil biology which will release nutrients for the plants it will also loosen up the soil so water will pass through it but at the same time that organic matter will soak up water retaining it there for once the soil dries out and it will be available for the plants and the microbes to feed on so definitely it does pay to have a nice rich free draining blend fear papaya tree now that sort of leads us on to tip number three watering now papayas are a fairly thirsty plant but as I said before they don't like a lot of water sitting around their roots so it is a bit of a fine balancing act you can install drippers or soaker hoses things like that to keep them nice and hydrated just making sure that the ground doesn't become saturated with our plants here this is the one up near the house it's in a wicking barrel so what that basically is is a self watering container there's a reservoir down the base and that water wicks up through the soil keeping the roots relatively dry and but the plant always has water available to it and the plant in the container down the back exactly the same thing it's a large wicking bed so there are ways to keep them well hydrated especially if you want to grow them in a container situation like us so papaya are susceptible to a couple of different fungal diseases so I thought I'd show you how to treat them and a few preventative steps you can take as tip number four so this papaya here is a volunteer and we weren't intending to keep it we were going to pull it out but as it started to set fruit we've decided to give it a reprieve and it's going to stay in the patch but as I wasn't paying much attention to it we did end up with a bit of a black spot outbreak and as you can tell these leaves or the lower ones don't look too happy so while the top of the tree looks nice and healthy and I see no signs of the black spot I do need to look after these lower sections which is what I'll give you a bit of a look at now so any diseased leaves like this one here will be chopped off and tossed into a bag that will go into the rubbish bin out the front for collection the reason I'm doing that is because these diseased branches if I compost them could release spores into the compost then when I spread that compost around the yard I could end up with a larger outbreak so all these guys need to come off now so now the worst-affected leaves have been removed from the tree what we can do is spray it with a fungicide what I've got here is a mix made from wettable sulphate which is basically a colloidal sulfur mixes very well and suspends in the water you spray that onto the plant itself and that will kill any spores that are remaining it is recommended that you don't apply wettable sulfur on days where the temperature is going to hit over 30 degrees Celsius apply it after the temperature drops in the afternoon black spot actually thrives in cool so it's recommended to do a preventative spray once a month from autumn all the way through to mid spring just to make sure you can keep it under control you might see one or two spots here or there but they won't last long if you keep up the spraying regime so there are other fungicides you can use on black spot and other fungal issues with papaya there's a copper based ones I don't want to use the copper based ones here because copper can build up to toxic levels in the soil if applied over and over again and because we're growing in containers it's a perfect environment for it to accumulate so we've pretty much all decided not to use the copper by the way the wettable sulfur is considered as an organic input or an allowable input on organic farms it's just basically salt for the element that you find in the soil anyway now there's a couple of elements you can feed papayas through the cooler months that will help boost their immune system and fight off fungal outbreaks like this potassium and magnesium so you can dose up once a month using potash and epsom salts epsom salts will add the magnesium and that will just give the plant a little bit extra other than its regular feed just to help keep it in peak condition to fight off these outbreaks and that leaves us on nicely to tip number five which is fertilizing the plant I actually need to feed this plant up today so we'll move the camera around and I'll show you how I'm going to do it now just quickly this bed here is a polyculture bed as you can see we have the papaya over in the corner we have a red celery here and we have some Egyptian walking onions down the front with a load of Egyptian spinach volunteers and a row of turmeric in the center here it's just dormant at the moment but it should start to shoot as soon as things warm up a bit so papayas are fairly heavy feeders so what I'm going to do is I'm going to feed up this bed with a commercial blend of compost you could use your own if you have some available I just don't have any on hand at the moment so you just simply this in the middle and then I'll spread it around so this compost I'm adding is based on blood and bone cow sheep and poultry manure also got some worm castings kelp and some other goodies in there so it is fairly rich and will feed up the whole bed so I'm adding in some slow-release organic pellet fertilizer because there's more plants than just that the pyre in this bed and also a sprinkling of rock dust that's because the plants can't mind in elements from down in the soil being in a container bed I'm also adding in some loosen or our falfa hay on top as a mulch that'll not only stop evaporation from the surface but the compost worms and microbes will feed on it making the nutrients in it available for the plants in the bed just quickly once a month from now on I will be moving the mulch aside and adding in a decent handful of this low release chicken-based organic fertilizer that'll just help add some nitrogen some potassium some phosphorous and calcium into the beds for the papayas just because they are a heavy producing plant I think I might have to UM supplement with a bit of magnesium from time to time and a bit of extra potassium these guys don't have a lot of magnesium in them so out will come the epsom salts so now we've given this young lady some TLC and we've fed up the bed we're on to tip number six which is when do you harvest the fruit now with the papaya you can eat it a few different ways you can eat a green which if that's the case you just pick it when it gets to a nice large enough size which is how we prefer then actually and then what we do is julienne them up with some green mango from the tree behind us here and have them in a bit of a salad you can harvest the papaya as soon as you see a blush of color coming to the green fruit and let it ripen up here on the kitchen bench inside or if you live in a pest-free area you can just let the fruit ripen on the tree if we do let them ripen on the tree though we have a couple of locals would like to help themselves as well we have this little one here that was left on too long and some flying foxes decided to um devour it in one sitting the other local natives would like to have a bit of a feast on them are the opossums both the ringtail and the brush tail so if you let them ripen up on the tree yeah you're quite likely going to find a few missing here are their to the possums and I've also heard of people in more built-up areas that will lose the ripe ones unfortunately to rats another case where you might want to harvest your fruit is if you do end up with black spot through the cooler months and you notice some black spots on the papaya fruit itself what you can do there is nip off those green mature fruits you can take them inside and give them a bath in 40 plus degree Celsius water for around about 20 minutes and that will kill off any of the spores on the outside of the fruit you can then take it out and let it ripen up on the bench and you should be as good as gold so we were talking about fruit so I thought I'd give you a bit of an added bonus and just discuss the sex of papaya trees now don't click off this is actually fairly interesting now with the paya trees a lot of the varieties will have either a male tree and a female tree so that means you need to get the pollen from the male over to the female to fertilize the fruit to give you something to harvest now this tree here and the other one we have up near the back stairs are both hermaphrodites they're marketed as bisexual now the reason they are hermaphrodites is they have what's known as a perfect flower they have a female fruit in the center another part of the flower that provides the pollen from the male part which is the stamen at the top of that there will be pollen and that will be transferred from there up to the stigma on the top of the female part of the flower and it will be fertilized and there you go you've got yourself a nice potentially large fruit if the fruit bats don't get it now once you do end up with your fertilized fruit you can plant out the seeds now one thing to be aware of is just because you get the seeds from a hermaphrodite plant doesn't mean you will end up with a papaya that is going to be able to self fertilize its own fruit it may revert back to a male or a female it's a bit of potluck so if you do want a guaranteed an aphrodisiac plant or bisexual plant it does pay for you to buy one from a nursery so I do hope you've enjoyed these tips and pointers on how you can grow a healthy happy papaya that'll provide you with tons of fruit for years on end if you have enjoyed this clip and you think it'll help out family and friends please share it along on different forms of social media it'll help me out and hit that subscribe button while you're at it as always I need to send out a quick g'day and thank you very much to all the marvelous folks who are supporting us over on patreon you can actually check out our super contributors websites and Facebook pages down in the description below there's a guitar maker and a couple of aquaponics ones there along with some backyard farmers like myself I do hope you're all well and happy in that your own gardens and papayas are booming and I'll catch you all next clip cheers all I have a top one you've been very patient haven't you Lizzy she's been laying down here waiting for me to finish the clip so we can go throw the ball which one goes throw the ball come on

Channel: Rob Bob's Aquaponics & Backyard Farm

Views: 742,897

Keywords: how to grow papaya, how to grow papaya in containers, growing papaya, pawpaw, how to grow pawpaw, how to grow pawpaw in containers, black spot on papaya, treating black spot on papaya, black spot on pawpaw, treating black spot on pawpaw, fertilising papaya, fertilising pawpaw, fertilizing papaya, wicking barrel, wicking bed, self watering container, rob bob's backyard, urban farm, Backyard farm, urban farming, backyard farming, Bits out the back, organic gardening

Id: 3ah9UPsY1IU

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2017