There's quite a story here in the back papaya patch. This spot started out when we moved in as just a patch of shampoo ginger. You can see the pretty green ginger plants growing from the ground up to 3 feet tall. In another month they'll have gorgeous red cones on 2 foot stalks, with each cone filled with nice smelling sticky goo that girls in the tropics wash their hair with.
I dug out all of the ginger rhizomes as they were too dense from duplicating over the years, and replanted just the right amount. I marked the patch with the white fencing and forgot about it.
A year ago when I started studying papaya and how easy it is to grow in Florida, I started a lot of papaya seed in the pool cage, caring for it and repotting each one when it got too big. I became very familiar with the shape. During that time, something odd happened. Somebody (human or animal or bird) planted papaya seeds in the ginger patch. Not a lot, just two. Pip and Pop. They showed up like weeds, and I'm sure anyone else would have cut them down. But I quickly realized they were unplanned papaya and let them go. I did absolutely nothing, even ignored them over the 6 month drought we had from November through May of this year. They not only excelled, they turned out to be a female on the left and a male on the right. Although I don't see any bees, I'm guessing the sphynx moths or bats at night are doing the pollinating job. Regardless... look.... papayas!
Here's some back up papayas I actually planted from seed.
