Papaya
Carica papaya
All the light available and never below 15°C: this one lives under glass or not at all.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange
- Sunlight
- Every scrap of light there is, under heated glass wherever winters are cold.
- Watering
- Regular water in growth, less in winter, and never to the point of waterlogging.
- Feeding
- A liquid feed every two weeks through the growing season.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- January
- Overwintering
- Keep it above 15°C; a heated greenhouse is not negotiable.
- Jan–Jan Flowering
- Jan–Jun Fruit Set
- Jun–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Jan Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 7 ft 5 in
- In-row spacing
- 7 ft 5 in
- Between rows
- 9 ft 10 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fine and fibrous, close to the surface
- Working depth
- 8–24 in
- Spread
- 8–12 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
The whole root system sits in the top hand-span of soil, so this is the first thing in the bed to feel a dry week and the last thing that should meet a fork. Hoe shallowly around it, and mulch instead of digging.
A giant herb rather than a tree: the roots are shallow and brittle and there is nothing woody holding it up, so a full-grown papaya goes over in a storm. It also rots at the collar in a heartbeat, which is why it is planted on a mound.
Figures recorded for Papaya itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Mealybugs Mealybug tucked into the leaf axils
- Whitefly Greenhouse whitefly, rising in clouds of tiny white insects
- Spider mites Red spider mite, fine webbing with stippled, yellowing leaves
- Powdery mildew Powdery mildew where the air sits still
- Root & crown rot Root rot from waterlogging, and the collapse comes fast
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Dragonflies & damselflies OdonataHunts Whitefly
Aerial hunters that take mosquitoes, midges and small flies on the wing all day, and whose larvae spend a year or more clearing the same insects from the water. A pond with planted margins and no fish is the way to have them.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Mealybugs
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Parasitic wasps Braconidae & TrichogrammaHunts Whitefly
Tiny, stingless wasps that lay eggs in or on caterpillars, aphids, and moth eggs — the white cocoons riding a hornworm are their calling card, so leave that caterpillar be. Umbel flowers with shallow nectar keep the adults fuelled.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
- Spiders AraneaeHunts Whitefly
Webs, ambushes, and night patrols make spiders the garden’s steadiest generalist predators, taking whatever flies or crawls past. Mulch, ground cover, and undisturbed corners keep the population dense.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com