Friday, August 21, 2009

Harvesting organic papaya

Well - harvesting may be slightly overstating it, when I only got one fruit :) But it's the first one we got off these trees (a previous fruit was taken by someone).

The trees are growing well, although the recent dry weather has not helped particularly, and you can see many fruits in the earlier stages, with couple that should be ready soon
carica papaya fruits

and some flowers too
carica papaya flowers

This was the fruit that was ripe
ripe papaya fruit

I was waiting for it all to lose the green colour, but the non-green part was clearly ripe, and if had left it any longer it would have started to rot, or go into someone else's kitchen. I'm not sure why the underside was ripening more, normally I would expect the part exposed to the sun to ripen quicker...
chopped papaya

and here it is chopped and ready for breakfast :) I'm not a super fan of papaya, but this one was nice - not too strong a taste and - of course - very fresh. It's called 'honey papaya' - which may be the same as the 'honey dew' variety.

And here is a fact sheet on papaya.







9 comments:

Jimi said...

Honey papaya? First time I heard the term but it look very tasty. It hard to plant anything in front of my house because every time the fruits ripe, someone else stole it. Happens all the times. Haih!

Bangchik and Kakdah said...

Look at that papaya... jutting out horizontally!!
~bangchik

julian said...

*Jimi* - ya you have to be quick off the mark :/

*Bangchik and Kakdah* - yes, I think it went funny shaped because of the lack of water.

Urban Green said...

wow! this reminds me of my childhood days when we never bothered for our patch of green like we do today.
added your blog...

http://www.theurbanbalcony.blogspot.com/

julian said...

Ya, but I learn to love gardens from my mother :)

River rock landscaping said...

I love papaya. The young leaves can be cooked and eaten like salad.
It's bitter, but it can be a natural medicine to add trombosit in blood.

julian said...

OK we may try that sometime...

marie-gael said...

i have about 6 papaya trees in my smallish yard. up until recently, they will grow very small fruit (just a couple centimenters) & fall off. i finally have my first papaya growing near full size, but i was wondering if you had any tips for this issue.

julian said...

Sorry I can't help you there. Just make sure it's getting enough water and sun. But it should be well drained also.