“Known You” Variety of Papaya

[FMfruitforest]

Grew out a seedling papaya plant from echo farms north fort myers that was labeled as “Known You” Variety
1. Began flowering around 3 ft of height.
2. Medium sized oblong papaya
3. The taste is mild but sweet mirroring a honeydew.

[palmcity]

Grew out a seedling papaya plant................. sweet.

I really enjoy growing and eating seedling papaya around my house also.

It is so strange to me that more people don't grow them as they are so easy to grow, sweet, and IMO much better than most fruit at this time of year & especially fruit like guava with fewer bugs able to penetrate the thicker papaya skin; guava gets way too many worms in the fruit. With papaya I rarely do anything except pick mine before turning totally yellow and put them into the frig to kill 1 or 2 that may have penetrated the thick skin.

I have never tried wrapping my papaya like you have as I just cut off the small area if invaded and it's usually less than 1/5 of the fruit and usually the other 4/5 is good tasting. However, if selling them I see why you would want to cover and prevent bug invasion.

If you have never tried growing papaya, do not go out to a nursery and buy a $25 papaya... Why? It's so much easier to just drop the papaya seeds and 3 months later you can have many papaya plants the same size. And if you don't, you need more practice growing plants anyway... lol.

For the few that do not know... Papaya rarely grow true from seeds..So you can name it what you like  ... first site I saw from google is pretty good on growing seedlings:  https://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-papaya.html

[pineislander]

I agree on papaya being a great thing to grow for winter fruit. They load up during the summer then fruit ripens during the time when less fruits are in season. There is less wasp pressure in the cooler weather. The past few months I am selling up to 100 pounds per week. I had many volunteers so I didn't grow from seed this year. That has turned out to be a problem as I've found the volunteers load up with over 100 pounds of fruit but are so superficially rooted they break off or topple over. I've lost 8 trees some have been propped up when they started leaning but still broke under the load.

I agree to grow good vigorous trees from seed, I have not seen very productive trees coming from nurseries.
Papaya grows very fast and the seedlings really have a short window in which they MUST be planted for success.
Those found in nurseries have almost always been held too long and lose their vigor.
My best results have been planting seeds in small plug pots or maximum 1 gallon pots, then before the trees get over one foot tall do the transplanting. Be sure to grow in full sun to keep them short and not reaching for sun.

If there is a chance of standing water you need to plant on a mound, many fail during high water events. My best results have also been by planting the trees deep, up to 1/2 of the tree being buried. They make adventitious roots and get a better foothold that way.

At the tropicalpermaculture.com site they suggest planting a handful of seeds in place and selecting the best six.
This is what happened for me on the volunteers. A dropped fruit rotted out and the seeds all grew and I selected from those. The problem is they get crowded, grow thin, and didn't develop very good root systems. Some also grew crooked which adds to the stress on the trunk when they load up.

When I say "load up", I am meaning that a highly vigorous papaya variety has the genetic potential to set 2-3 flowers on a panicle instead of just one. At that point the tree has 2-3 times the fruit on the same tree.
One last point is that my best papaya have been from the professional hybrid seeds. One advantage is that out of 200 seeds I have never had to eliminate a male plant, all were either female or hermaphrodite. The hermaphrodite fruits are longer and have thicker flesh. My favorite has been "Red Lady".
https://www.shop.alohaseed.com/product.sc?productId=17&categoryId=4

One of my best. It continued to set even more and lived two years till it was too high to pick even with a ladder.
This is the potential:

[pineislander]

The Red lady variety give me fruit up to 8 pounds, average is about 4 pounds.