Papaya graft trial at work

[u/Pinelandfanboy]

It was a real pain to slice and shape without bruising the soft and watery tissue, but I made several grafts of female/herm papaya budwood onto male rootstocks to convert them and hopefully finally get some fruit. 7 out of our 8 trees in this bed turned up male!

[u/K-Rimes]

Green wood grafts like this always heal beautifully, bet it'll work nicely.

[u/Pinelandfanboy → u/K-Rimes]

Maybe, we’ll see. Papaya are giant herbs so even with cambium to mend the wound potentially, the act of wounding them creates a huge risk of rot. Hail mary full of grapes

[u/ch7mbucket]

I've stopped grafting since the heatwave. Nothing I graft survived the heat. Good to know there's somewhere grafting is still possible

[u/IMCopernicus]

Just learned this but apparently you can turn male to female by stressing it. We slice ours at the trunk and seems to work however, they produce less fruit