Project Papaya V3

We use to have a couple of these during my childhood days. Well guess things are not what it used to be. Had been having problem with the weather, causing drought and wet stress on the plants. Then there is pest infection as well as fungus infection.

 Our third batch trial on Papaya started back on April. Germinating the seeds I guess was the easy part. I have faster germination and higher germination rate by germinating on a raised bed. I prefer this method as I find that it suits my local condition better as our water supply is inconsistent. Raised beds retain more heat and moisture that small germination tray. I didn’t have much luck using germination tray. We had some problem with chickens (neighbors) scratching on the raised beds and ants carrying away seeds during the germination period. Heavy drops of water / rain also created problem like toppling the seedling. This can be taken care of by putting shading net over it, a few inches higher than the raised bed. My guys are doing this, but I took the lazy way out, doing the raised bed underneath a tree, and blocking it with whatever waste that is available, such as old wood, bamboo & etc.

 

This time, I transferred the seedlings to poly bags after they germinated with 2 to 4 leaves. It is very tender at this stage. I feel that I am getting higher survival rates after transfer as there are so young and adaptive, or maybe they are too naive and is easy to cheat. I find using poly bags of 6 inches diameter X 9 inches deep provides more space for the root to grow and retain more heat and moisture. We can keep the seedling to even to a foot tall in this size of bag. Also it’s not too large or heavy to transport for field planting. These seedlings are kept under a shade of 70%. Correct amount of watering at this stage is critical. Too much, fungus attack, too little it gets dried off. Depending on the weather and field condition, I transfer them to field at a height of 5 inches and above.

 Once transferred to field, irrigation is also very critical for the first two months. We encountered some problem as it was hot and dry during, then sudden rain for some time. Also we need to water the plants as sometimes it’s real hot. All these factors caused the stem to break up, infecting the stem with fungus / bacteria. This caused stem / collar rot. We had some plants dying, died. We try saving the plants but at the same time, planted another one next to it. 

We had some mealy bugs attack. Fruit flies are also a plenty. We had started to wrap up the papayas.

Then came Fungus attack, Anthracnose and Powdery Mildew.

 

We also tried planting about 200 papaya plants, integrating it with pumpkins. As we were short of workforce and it was left uncared for a while. The weeds had grown too long. We are having a tough time weeding them. It can only be done manually with hand, as we do not want to damage the pumpkins and papaya. The pumpkins had bore some fruits, but due to the dry season and long weeds, the harvest was mostly damaged but rats. The weeds did helped by shading the papaya and help keep the soil moist. Had started to clear the weeds, but plenty more to go. Don’t think we can

 clear it before I go off for may vacation. Had requested my helpers to follow through on the weeding and fertilizing.

 

We have some papayas starting to flower and started to have small fruits. Need to do some fertilizing. The 3 surviving Mas Solo are growing healthily. We hope for these 3 to bear fruits so that we can propagate more of these variety should it pass our screening. Was looking closely at the 3 Mas Solo, then went around the farm, am quite sure we have more of them as some of the seeds were mixed.

Special thanks to Michael J, whom had offered plenty advice.

Stay tune for more updates.