It gives a great pleasure to grow fruit baring plants and trees at home. Today I was able to harvest 2 papayas from my home garden. I don't have a big home garden but I do have a few space where I manage to grow some plants and trees.
We did not intend to grow this papaya tree at home. It grew automatically without any nurturing. About 8 months back this started as a small tree near our fencing and we thought it wouldn't make it. But we did give a small support to it by connecting a thread to the fence. Right now it is bending down and growing as if it would fall any moment.
The good thing is, it took some time for the first two papayas to grow but the other papayas are growing faster and healthy. Absolutely zero maintenance. I remember having a few papaya trees in our backyard about 15 years back. After that now only we are having one here. Maybe I will continue to grow some every year.
Papaya trees usually last only for a year or probably 2 years. After that the nutrition will not be enough for the tree to bare fruits properly. If nutrition is giving continuously, it might stretch and grow another few months probably.
We wanted to pluck these two papayas from the tree before it became orange. The main reason is because the tree was unable to bare the weight of the fruits hanging. It will continue to ripe even after it is plucked out from the tree.