Tropicals & Tender Perennials: What to do with all the papaya seedlings?!, 1 by tropicalaria

tropicalaria wrote:
3-gallon tree pot of papaya, "Sunrise somethingorother".

So here's the story. Last year I obtained fresh seeds from a variety of papaya that my wife used to enjoy in the Dominican Republic (where papaya is known as lechosa). This is a large-fruited papaya with reddish flesh. Knowing that papaya tends to germinate easily I only put a few seeds down, but after two weeks I hadn't seen any thing coming up. So I put down more. Repeat until all of these seeds were planted. The idea was that they'd get started under my grow lights in the winter and be ready to put out in the spring, large enough to give fruit by the end of the growing season.

Fast-forward to this spring. I put the seeds outside (where it is very warm) along with the rest of my unsuccessful seed plantings. The papaya came up. In June. All of them. So now I have more papaya plants than I know what to do with and it's too late in the season for me to get fruit if they're planted outside in the ground. I'll probably plant a few in the ground anyway and try to overwinter a few, but now I'm out of seed for next year. . . I don't know if papaya plants can be sent through the mail; I've heard that they resent having their roots disturbed.

Ah well. If growing tropicals in a temperate environment wasn't such a challenge, it probably wouldn't feel like such an accomplishment when it did work. :)