How To Grow Papaya In Pots from Seeds at Home

Papaya is a fruit that packs a lot of flavour and health benefits. Not only does it taste good, but it also helps with digestion, improves the level of blood glucose and reduces the risk of heart disease.

Some eat it as is, or put it in smoothies, and if you’ve never tried raw papaya salad, you should really give it a try!

Do you know what else you should try? Growing it at home! 

Believe it or not, you can actually start these plants off in your garden, in large pots or grow bags!

1. Let’s start with the seeds. You can go and get a nice healthy-looking Papaya from the market. It should be ripe. After cutting the papaya open, scoop out the seeds in the middle and spread them out on a plate. Pick out the ones that are pale or extremely dark. A good medium shade of brown is the colour we are looking for in the seeds. Let these seeds dry a little in the sun for a day or 2.

2. Take a pot with sufficient drainage. You can plant these in smaller pots and then transplant then into bigger ones as they grow. You can also opt to plant them in their final big container but transplanting the good seeds from a smaller one will be easier.

3. Fill up your pot with a potting mix. You can use a mixture of normal garden soil, organic compost and sand. Put in a layer of just sand and stone at the bottom to promote more drainage.

4. Leaving a few inches off the top, the pot should be full with the soil. Now you can sow the seeds that have been drying for a day or so. Space them out evenly on the surface. Cover these seeds up with an inch of potting mix. 

5. Water these seeds thoroughly and keep in a bright sunny spot. Papaya trees love warmth!

6. After 2 or 3 you’ll see your seedlings sprouting out. Leave them be for another 2 weeks to grow to about 10 inches. Keep the soil moist.

7. After 4 or 5 weeks from germination, it’s time to transplant the healthy-looking ones. If the leaves have a good pointy patterned shape to the and are not leggy, you can count them as healthy. Discard the ones that have small leaves and haven’t grown as much as the others.

8. Plant the healthy ones in their individual’s containers. Keep at least 4 or 5 healthy ones because only the female ones will give fruit after pollination. There is no way to tell if the plant is a male or a female from just the leaves. All the trees look the same. So, keeping a few gives us room for error. 

9. One way to tell if your plant is going to give a fruit is to check the buds. Fruit-bearing plants will have only a single large bud. Male trees have several bugs in one round of bloom. 

10. After transplanting, it’s basically a waiting game now. It may take from 9 to 11 months for you to see fruit on your plants. You just have to be patient now. Keep the plant in as much warmth as you can. Keep checking the moisture of the soil. They like being moist but not soggy. With time, your female papaya plants will give you fruit that you can enjoy!

Until next time,

Have a lovely day and Happy Planting!!

Gayatri Vaidya©