Growing Papayas

Jai Ganesha!

In our steady march along the path of self-sufficiency and natural abundance, one oft overlooked but prolific plant is the humble papaya tree. These wonderful fruit trees give plenty of fruits in our climate, but they don't have very long lifespans, living at most four or five years. This requires an ever-repeating propagation of them. Recently the monks of the Siddhidatta Kulam have been placing the seedlings in larger pots, out in the direct sunlight next to the monastery kitchen. This round of little trees is doing quite well and are immensely enjoying our recent dry and sunny weather. As it turns out Papayas are quite a healthful fruit, being high in vitamins, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, digestive enzymes and more, all the while being very low in sugars.

Yali the kitten discovers some new papaya seedlings

These seedlings are growing in the bright sun next to our Nakshatra Garden

Yogi Dayanatha and Nirvani Tejadevanatha explain a little about growing papayas, as they head to the shop to work on vehicle maintenance

Our papayas grow well, but our island does have a blight which causes our papayas to get little spots and go bad early. A problem solved by eating them right away!

Yali is not sure what to think of the camera..

..or the seedlings for that matter

An example of one of our recent harvests. This one is about a foot long.

On an unrelated note, one of our favorite orchids is in bloom

This is the chocolate orchid and it smells like, you guessed it, chocolate!

Another gem of a flower. Aum Namah Sivaya.

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