[Fishteacher73]

I am getting ready to plant sone pumpkins and watermellons and cantelopes w/ my kids...First time in a long time I've done any veggies, but hopefully all will go well. At least the kids will get tto play in the dirt.

[tarak]

My home is in a citrus orchard with lot of tangerines and limes.I am planning to grow some papayas.

[Turtle]

___Tarak, how long does it take to grow a Papaya? Is it on a tree?
___Now that Spring is sprung, this thread is really starting to grow!
___Orby, watch out for the thorns on those cacti!
___Fish, last year I grew a pumpkin inside a 4" plastic tube to make a phreaky jack-o-lantern. It only worked until I took the tube off at harvest & the pumkin was soft & too weak to carve. It was pretty cool looking though; about a foot tall & perfectly tubular with a little cap & stem overhanging the top. Maybe just a belt around a growing pumpkin to shape it would work.
___Nothing better than playing in the dirt! Keep on growing!

[tarak]

Papaya is polygamous, with three primary sex types: female, male and bisexual.
Papayas should produce fruit within a year of planting. Most papayas are grown from seed because of the impracticality of vegetative propagation methods in nursery production. Seeds are extracted from fully ripe fruit, washed to remove gelatinous material and planted several per pot of soil or potting medium.

Germination is accomplished in approximately two weeks under full sunlight. The plants can be set out as soon as they are large enough (about 1 foot tall) to survive with minimal care. The pots of plants should be spaced 8 to 10 feet apart.

Papaya seedlings should begin flowering in five to six months, at which time they can be thinned to a single female or bisexual plant at each site. In the absence of bisexual plants, one male plant is needed for every eight to ten females.

[Turtle]

___Well, my little garden is poisoned; the landlord & gang showed up out of the blue yesterday & started scraping the paint off the side of the house. This house was built in the 40's as housing for the Vancouver WA Kaiser shipyard workers & is full of lead based paint. (Probably asbestos is the plaster too!)
___My roomates are really mad now & unlike me who shys from conflict, they have contacted the authorities & an EPA guy is coming down from Seattle tomorrow. We may have to ecacuate right away!
___Good grief!

[Turtle]

___Just because my garden is dead doesn't mean your garden doesn't matter. How's those cacti Orby? Tormod I know your on vacation so Yvonne isn't planting the deck yet. Who was palnning melons? Are they in yet?
___I did make a new box out of some recycled redwood for my bonsai, a Cypress. It is in new leaf production & this year I am not going to prune now as I have the last several years. It occured to me the tree may be old enough to bloom & fruit now, and repotting is rather a severe shock as well. I note that the ongoing shocks of pruning both limbs & roots, small restrictive pots, wire bending etc. all go to keeping the bonsai small,

[orbsycli]

the cacti grew up very nicely

[Turtle]

___Excellent Orby! Everything they could be then?
___I'm over at my new place; we're almost in. We have until Sunday midnight to clear out of the other place. Everything here is overgrown with weeds & I have a lot o' work to do. The entire back hill (well, cliff maybe) is covered in blackberry; I have to wait for my body to make new blood before I go after those again! With all the activities of moving, I may not have time to put in a veggie garden this year. Our little bonsai made the move safely, so now I have to find just the right spot for it.
___Keep diggin' it!

[Turtle]

___In regard to a forestry concern, that of English Ivy, I note that most of the large trees behind me have a choking growth of this Ivy. Oregon State (if not Washington too) have declared it a noxious weed for this very reason. The Ivy when overtaking a large tree may have a weight of tons causing trees to break in the wind, & the trunk is made vulnerable to rot & insects under the mats of vine.
___On my hillside I have Ivy on Red Oaks, Maples, & Douglas Fir; some of these trees rise over 70 feet with Ivy 2/3 covering. What a disaster!

[Turtle]

___I spent part of my day clearing brush, both Blackberry brambles & English Ivy. I cut all the vines around one large fir, some as much as 3" in diameter. According to this link I found, this should kill the vine in the tree & then I have to pull it out & dig up the roots.
http://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weed_info/Wri...ngs/Hedera.htm