I do not like them Sam-I-Am.
I think I have spoken to you about paw paw (papaya for some) being my pop up plant before. They turn up everywhere in the garden, and at any given time I have four or five little ones sitting innocently in places where they weren't the day before.
So I say I don't love the fruit, but I am slowly trying to change my mind.
They are quite fabulously practical trees. They grow straight up and branch out at the top, so they take up hardly any room at all. They seem to fruit easily within less than 12 months of emerging from the ground, and apart from being eaten as a ripe fruit, you can grate up the green ones and use them in salads. I also read on Gardening Australia that you can cook them up like a vegetable, but unfortunately they forget to tell you how.
You can also mash them up and use them as a beauty mask. I admit to being guilty of trying this, and it really does seem to leave your skin nice and soft. Although you can't help but feel like a bit of a pork chop sitting around with mashed up fruit on your face.
The other thing that is warming me to paw paw, is that the boys love them. They plop down on the grass and cut them up with butter knives, treating themselves to full body masks, inside and out.
And they are pretty. This one here is an older one, and it goes all the way up to the kitchen window of our high set home.
They are too high for us, so these ones we share with the possums and bats.
I will learn to love them.
14 comments:
I reckon they look pretty good too. I get so jealous of your tropical plants that just grow overnight! Paw Paw me!
Hi Ali, How wonderful that they just pop up for you. It is a funny image you sitting around with squashed pawpaw on your face! And I believe they are incredibly healthy. At the moment it is raining hard and humid, like being in the tropics.
cheers, catmint
I love reading about all this tropical fruit you have in the garden. I always learn something new. That papaya color in the first picture is just beautiful. Is that the color of ripen papaya? We get them here in supermarkets and I can't tell if they are still green or rotten...
Hazel you lovely young thing, with your lovely productive garden you have nothing to be envious of :)
Catmint, it is nice, isn't it? I should appreciate them more. It's just that they taste so gross! I am going to try them green in a salad, that might be yum, who knows.
Vrtlarica ana, I feel like such a cheat, but that first paw paw is really tiny and green, it was the sunlight and the angle of the photo that produced the orange colour! But yes, that would be the colour it would be when it is ripe.
I'm sure the pawpaw will win you over Ali. It's such a Qld thing to do - particularly with a fruit salad. We have them coming up all over the place too. Do you eat them cold from the fridge or room temp? I've found that most tropical fruit is much nicer at room temp. The red papaya is easy to grow too.
Go the pawpaw face mask!
Bananas.. and pawpaw?! My jealousy cup overflows. I don't like to eat them either (they taste a little rotten to me?) but I would love to make gooey fresh face masks.
The leaves look oddly like Fatsia japonica. Was thinking I might try one (vaguely sub-tropical climate) - until I saw its height.
Esther
It's interesting how quickly they grow! Didn't there used to be a song "Pickin' up Paw Paws, Put 'em in your pocket.."
If you get a lot of fruit, it's might be hard to keep ahead of them?
I LOVE papaya! If I could I'd take a couple of spare plants off you... The papayas we get in our shops here are pathetic - pale and tasteless and very expensive. You know of course that papaya is also used extensively as a meat-tenderiser, don't you? That's probably why it works so well as a cosmetic face-mask.
My dream breakfast is: a nice ripe papaya(with a wedge of lime); a hand of those little tiny asian-style bananas; a wedge of fresh pineapple; some fresh orange juice; some Java coffee; and a large piece of Kek Pisang (banana cake). How does that sound?
I'd love to grow them, but our winters are just on the cool side - even though we're supposed to be sub-tropical. We saw plantations of them in Rarotonga and they looked amazing.
Oh my... I wish they would grow all over my yard! We absolutely love them and like to make a hot sauce from them during our canning season.
Hi Ali,
I just discovered your blog on Blotanical - welcome! You're right, it is a beautiful tree. I'm always jealous of your warm northern gardens. I hope you're garden survived all of the natural disasters up there intact and you continue to write - you make me smile at the thought of you sitting around with it on your face (I'd definitely try it out too!).
Cheers,
Karly
Wow, looks like ur papaya is doing pretty well. I got one also but it's not doing too good.
Hi Helen, they just like it here, I certainly don't have any hand in their doing so well :)
Hi Karly, thanks for the visit :) The rain does seem to have finally stopped, and in Brisbane we missed right out on the cyclone... Most of the vegetables did get wiped out with all the rain, but now it's boiling hot again, back to normal here at least :)
Eliza I'd love to know more about the hot sauce??? ALthough the thought of it is kind of turning my stomach! It's bad enough cold for me :)
Laura I'm not sure how hot they need it to be, but yes I would imagine they don't love the cold.
Mark, you would do very well in the tropics methinks :) Breakfast sounds lovely, however could we cut down on the amount of paw paw?! And I didn't know that it was a meat tenderiser, so in my vow to learn to like them, I'll look that up.
Shady we do get a lot of fruit, but I just give away any surplus... or feed them to the chickens... or put them on my face :p
Esther that tall one is quite old, at least 5 years now I'd say. The one in the first picture is only around 7 months old, and not as tall as me yet. You could grow them, have them fruit, chop them down and grow some more!
In your bathroom :)
Wendy I have never tried the red one... do you grow them?
And Kat, any time you are up here, please do drop by for a cup of tea and face mask :)
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