Like mango and passion fruit seedlings, the first different types of pawpaw we ate at the homestead, gave us seeds that we poured in the nursery in grooves and on lines in order to get seedlings. The germination at the nursery was fast and plentiful. The seedlings were very healthy.
We transplanted the seedlings in the designated areas in groups of threes or fours just in case some seedlings died or withered. Where all the seedlings made it, we pruned them by pulling out one or two respectively and leaving two.
The seedlings progressed very fast and very well indeed. Like guavas and custard apples, they too did not need much care once the seedlings stabilized in the areas where they were transplanted. They raced in their development and by the end of the first year some of them depending on the type were three feet tall and flowering.
This is a fruit that gave us a lot of food, money and very little work.
The leaves were food for cattle and vegetables for us; the fruit was food for cattle, poultry and us; the trunks and stems were manure. No part was useless.
We never bought seeds as we used seeds left after eating to plant in the nursery to replace the old trees that reduced their fruiting after four years and eventually dried out and collapsed.
We had a variety of types of fruit: from small ones to very big ones and from round ones to long ones. Some were red inside while others were orange or yellow inside. Some of the trees were very tall while some were medium height or short. The tree trunks also varied in size with some having branches that bore fruits on them.
When mature going by the color change on all sides or a patch on one side, we harvested them and put them in cardboard boxes or wooden boxes or just left them lying on old newspapers on the corner of one of the verandahs with Lukina leaves added on top to help with the ripening process. They turned out yellow outside and sweet unlike those forced to ripen after being harvested prematurely.
The plants were totally disease free. At times, monkeys loved harvesting them for themselves during the day.