Growing Papaya from Seed

Another rainy day here in Southern California. I know we need it, but honestly, I don't know how you guys in wet climates do it. I guess you're just used to it, and I'm probably just a whiny baby, so let's just get to the video. Papaya is one of my favorite fruits, especially my favorite tropical fruit, and the first time I had one was in Hawaii, and I learned there that you squeeze lime onto the papaya, and it gives it a perfect balance of sweet and acid. And I don't know if it's just me, but it kind of tastes like Froot Loops. If you've had that before, papaya with lime, and think the same thing, or maybe you just think I'm crazy, let me know down in the comments. So I have several Hawaiian papayas growing in my garden, and they've been very temperamental. I grew these from seed out of a Hawaiian papaya from the grocery store. It took about two years to get my first fruit, but it was so worth it. I watched and waited for that first flower to appear, and I was so excited. I was ready with a little paintbrush to hand pollinate it, and it was a success. And a few months later, I was able to eat my first homegrown papaya. Unfortunately, it's been my only homegrown papaya. You see, papayas come in three sexes. Male, female, and hermaphroditic, meaning both male and female in the same plant. Because you can't tell which sex your papaya is going to be before it blooms, and you need a male and a female, or one hermaphroditic plant. So it's always suggested to plant at least five in a group, so that odds are one will be a male. Now, I have five or six, and so far, not one is a male. The first one to bloom, however, was hermaphroditic, so I guess I was lucky. But the male parts of the flower are really tiny, and maybe don't attract the pollinators. I don't know, but it needs to be hand pollinated. So I've gone through multiple papayas that just start to, you know, show after the flower is on there, and then they just fall off and die. So I've gone back to hand pollinating, and so now I've got a few out there that are looking like they're pollinated, and they're growing. So fingers are crossed there. But hopefully, you know, one of the ones that hasn't bloomed will be a male. We'll see. Hawaiian papayas also need just a little more heat than we've got here. We're right on the edge, you know, any frost is really, they're not going to like it. Now that is rare here. We had one night last winter where there was frost, and some of the leaves got a little damaged. It didn't kill the plant. I don't think we'll ever really get a heavy enough frost to kill the plant. We had frost last night, and we had frost last week, and it didn't really seem to do much damage. But Hawaiian papayas are a little more finicky about the cold. Another thing with Hawaiian papayas is they're pretty much, you're pretty much guaranteed that they are a GMO plant. And so if I don't have to grow a GMO papaya, I'd prefer not to. And there are other options. One option is a Mexican red papaya. Those grow in the mountainous regions of Mexico, South America. So they can take a little bit more cold, not a lot. And generally they are not GMO. So that being said, last September, I think it was, I went and got a Mexican papaya from the store. They're a lot bigger, and I did a taste test, and I approve. So we, it was a little bit too early. I'd like to plant papaya seeds in the spring so they have all summer and fall to kind of get to a mature enough point where they can actually handle the winter outside. Even though we have mild winters, it does help. So I scooped out the seeds of that papaya. And once you've scooped the seeds out, you want to clean them in like a metal strainer. And as you're running the water over those seeds, you want to kind of press against the metal strainer. So you're breaking that gelatinous membrane that's around each one of those seeds. And then just dump them out on a paper towel and let them dry for a few days. And you can, you don't have to wait. You can plant them then. Or like I did, I just put them away in an envelope, and I have them ready now to plant or to sow. And I'm not going to sow them in the ground just yet. As I said, we did have a frost last night. So I do want to wait about a month or maybe six weeks to get them out into the garden. So this is what they look like. The way I'm going to be germinating these seeds is in a damp paper towel in a plastic baggie. So the materials you need, obviously the seeds, a bottle of water, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, paper towel, plastic Ziploc bag. And if you have one, what comes in handy would be a seed mat. It just kind of warms the area up around the seeds just a few degrees, but enough to kind of give them a head start. The peroxide is, and this is scientifically proven, I didn't make this up and I just found this out. If you add some peroxide to the water, the peroxide will actually help break down the seed exterior so the water can get to the embryo to help it have a better chance of germinating. So what we're going to do is I've already dumped out five capfuls of water from the bottle. And so I already know I'm going to add about five capfuls of peroxide in here. And also I'm just going to squirt it in here till it's filled up. Give it a shake. And then we're going to put our papaya seeds, sprinkle them out here. We're just going to fold them into the paper towel. And this might get a little messy. I probably should have had some kind of a bowl, but here I'll do it on the seed mat. I'm just going to kind of soak that paper towel with this solution. And maybe just squeeze out the excess just so you've got it damp. And I'm going to put it in the plastic bag. And I'm not going to zip lock it just to let it get some air. And I'm going to put it right on the heat mat. Plug the heat mat in a, you know, a dark place or a little bit of light. It really doesn't matter just for the germination process. And I will make another video once these have sprouted and are ready to plant up into some kind of potting mix. If you guys have any questions, leave them in the comments below, and I will definitely answer them for you. As always, like and subscribe. I'd appreciate it. And we'll see you guys on the next video.