Paw-paws, or papayas, as they are often called. Grow well in sub-tropical areas. They also provide a little shade for other plants to grow underneath. To grow them I suggest growing to a good organic market and purchasing a mixture of yellow and red ones over a period of a few weeks. With the best tasting most juicy ones I'd then scoop out the seed from the middle, eat the rest, then wash and dry out the seed a bit. Then I'd prepare the soil - actually you're probably best to prepare the soil a few weeks in advance. Get stacks of well composted horse manure, worms castings, some chicken manure and dolomite, and mix it around a bit. The dolomite is to sweeten the soil as paw-paws like the soil a little more alkaline and, in this area at least, the soil tend sot be acidic. In areas of high rainfall the soil probably is slightly acidic. To not confuse you too much dolomite equals acid soil turned to less acidic soil - follow instructions on the pack. If you have ever had heart burn it is similar to giving a giant antacid tablet (which might actually work, as they are mainly calcium). Anyway, you then mound up the soil, as paw-paws like good drainage and mulch heavily with some sugarcane and lucerne hay - about 15 cms. Sprinkle a little extra chook manure and dolomite into this, and, closer to fruiting, you might even want to add some potash.

In this mound you plant a few seeds. You really need to try and grow at least 4 or 5 trees on separate mounds as you require male and female paw-paws to get much fruit off your plants. They don't need to be planted that far apart, but at least 2 meters is pretty good. In between the plants. I know I called them trees first, but really they are a fast growing herbaceous plant that grows to about 2-3 meters - males grow slightly taller. Before I go on, you can tell males from females by the fact that males produce heaps of flowers but no fruit and females, fewer flowers and some fruit. There are bi-sexual varieties but they are apparently not as good. You only need one male between about six plants to get good fruit set. You should also try encouraging bees into your garden to help pollinate, but they seem to do this mostly by the wind. To attract bees plant lots of holy basil on the mounds, which flower over long periods, smell good, are easy to look after, self seed, and are generally absolutely fantastic - though not that nice to eat - for more on holy basil go to my index page.

In between these trees, not necessarily on the mounds, you can try planting lab-lab beans. These beans are a must for sub-tropical gardens, they grow vigorously and form a thick ground cover whilst also providing the soil with some nitrogen as they are legumous. They can also be slashed when the paw-paws are bigger and added to the compost heap or placed around the bottom of the trees for extra mulch.

Paw-paws grow fast, and if you plant the seed in autumn you might expect some fruit to start forming by the end of winter, when the plants should be around a metre or so in height if watered regularly. Remember the mounds are important, I've lost whole plants during heavy rain periods as they can't stand wet feet I think.

I think that's about it for paw-paws, just pick them when they are half orange (or reddish orange). For the philosophical angle, well there is none. Of course the message behind this is that you should be critical of everything you read. As the Buddha said, it must first make sense to you before you can accept it, blind faith is no good.

Some Last Words on the sub-tropic Garden

Well, I'm just going to list a few plants you might not have thought about for your garden under titles...

Bee and beneficial insect attractors

These are of course good for attracting bees. Flowers also help to attract beneficial predatory insects which will come and eat other bugs that eat your plants. You need bees to help plants like pumpkins and zucchinis set fruit. Sometimes pumpkins will lose their fruit before it is fully formed due to lack of bee action (and also during high heat and humidity)

For winter/ spring you can try borage, nasturtiums, salvias, cosmos, snapdragons and holy basil.

For summer try all varieties of basils, especially holy basil, also let parsley and coriander go to flower. You can also plant stacks of sunflowers. Plant these things in areas where you want good pollination, such as around the pumpkin patch.

Legume plants and soil improvers

These help to draw nitrogen into the soil, and naturally improve the soil.

Try pigeon peas, which also grow tall and provide some shade and nitrogen, lab-lab beans, as mentioned before, as well as snake beans, soya beans, chick peas a cow peas (all legumes). For soil improvers try yarrow, borage, comfrey and radishes - all these plants (except yarrow) put down deep roots and help to loosen the soil and bring nutrients up to the surface. The yarrow, borage and comfrey also help to accumulate trace elements and can be slashed and mulched or composted or made into teas to feed plants.

You can also grow plants primarily for mulch. Some plants which are good for this in the sub-tropics are lemon grass and citronella grass (two closely related species - I don't know if that's the right word I'm no good with biology, anyway they look almost identical), which both multiply profusely in the right conditions and which can be regularly trimmed to provide mulch or added to composts. You can also grow sugarcane, which can also provide a little shade and protection from wind for other plants, as well as being slashed from time to time to mulch or compost. I've been growing purple sugarcane which I got mail order from Greenpatch Seeds (link on left).

Another good technique for improving soils is to grow green manures. Green manure is basically a process of planting seeds then either slashing them or digging them into the soil when they are very young. In the sub-tropics young might try a mixture of oats, barley and aduki beans, in the cooler months. You can grow them to about 5 to 10 cm in height then cutting them back. This helps to improve soil structure.

Heat tolerant plants

Try things like okra, eggplants, pumpkins, rockmelons, watermelons, paw-paws (of course), snake beans, daikon radishes, all types of basils, sunflowers, corn, Egyptian spinach, Ceylon spinach, Australian spinach, zucchinis, cucumbers, Vietnamese mint, ginger, tuneric, midyim berries (an Australian native). With the curcubits listed here (cucumbers, rockmelons, pumpkins, zucchini) high humidity can be a problem due to problems with mildew, lessen the trouble by only watering the base of the plant, in the mornings, and not the leaves and to provide some shade from the mid-day sun. Remember when they say full sun in a gardening book they might be meaning some weak English or Dutch variety not the brain-draining body straining types we can get in the sub-tropics. For those in the tropics, well I'd also suggest growing crocodiles as they don't seem to survive in these parts.