Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Is or has anyone grown paw paw in WA. Are they temperature dependant?

Ive read that 2 varieties are required for cross pollination etc, does anyone have experience with growing them from seed in AP or otherwise.

Cheers

Hi Charlie, my pawpaw grow well and are reasonably cold tolerant but don’t like frosts. I grow the bisexual form so I only need one.
If I was to grow one in my aquaponics I would give it its own blue barrel 'cos the roots would take over

Two types charlie, yellow and red, the red is bi sexual while the yellow requires 1 x male for about 8 female plants. Be warned that the two colours together normally turns the red back to requiring a male female ratio.

I prefer the red myself and beware of frost that will kill them. We grow paw paw here and it gets to below 0 c a couple of days of the year. Sheltered spot out of winter winds also helps . Cheers

Thanks guys, did you grow yours from seed? Is there anything I need to know with germination

From my failing recollection is that you will get around 80% bisexual seedlings using seed from a bisexual plant.
My plants were all purchased as I needed the certainty if I was going to make the effort to grow them.

I prefer to buy Red seedlings as well, about 300 mm high

Just to be scientifically correct it is not pawpaw, it is papaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_pawpaw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya

But who cares, its a common name now anyway

Red pawpaws are awesome! Bisexual too (even more awesome)
Beautiful sweet flesh
From little red solos to the those great big bas#%&ds that weight 5-10kgs each.

Yellows pawpaws taste like ass.

I used to pick pawpaws. To get the really high fruit the boss welded some box pipe under the canopy of the tractor to install slide out planks (literally just a plank) and replaced the roof with plywood to store all the picked fruit on.
So for the really high trees I would be using a 2.5m aluminium pole standing on a plastic tub (on it's end, sitting on the foot wide plank, 2m off the ground) stretching up as far as I could reach.
I was assured it was safe

Oh, all in the pouring FNQ rain. Good fun

I planted some seed last year and they came up this year.

Are you looking to protect them from the cold snaps in Narrogin dbird?

You guys are international now, so you've got to get the vernacular correct.



I am not even going to ask....

I recently went to a wine tasting of some Australian wines. The sommelier raved about two in particular: One that he liked because of after tones of kerosene, the other that he REALLY liked he said was reminiscent of cat urine. I always wanted to visit your land, but I think I’m bringing a large jar of peanut butter and some pure spring water, thank you very much.


Poppa

Mine are in the greenhouse but even that gets a bit cold for them in winter,they would have survived alright last year but the slugs got to them in the spring .I will try to post some pics of what they did.

I had a really nice bisexual one going last year and then I noticed it was getting funny marks on one side and couldn't work out what was wrong for a long time then I went out with the torch one night and discovered it was covered in slugs.Next day I flooded the pot that it was growing in and they all came to the top and the fish had a feast.A week later all the new shoots had disappeared and when I flooded it again I got just as many.I have to do it fairly often to keep them under control.While the stump looked dead I didn't pull it out because the bark was still healthy .the first piicture shows the stump and the second shows a new shoot coming out.the match is to give you an idea of the size.And the best thing to pick a slug up with is a spoon.