Grafting Tropical Papaya to Create a Cold Hardy Super Tree

[00:00:05]So here we have a successful graft of the solo papaya tropical papaya onto a oak leaf papaya rootstock. Now as the camera lady takes a look, you can see they are completely different. The oak leaf papaya is more like a tree and here's the rootstock. It's a seedling and what I did is I took a um a growing young uh solo papaya and I grafted it onto it.

[00:00:36]And as you can see it's fused and it's growing. These are all new growth on it.

[00:00:39]So I can honestly say that I've successfully grafted oak leaf uh excuse me, yeah, solo papaya onto oak leaf. It's successful and it's growing.

[00:00:50]Now we're going to take a look at how I actually go through that process because it's a difficult process but once you learn it, you can pretty much do the average person could do it.

[00:01:01]And that is grafting a tropical papaya onto an oak leaf papaya rootstock.

[00:01:09]Okay, so what we have here is a seedling solo papaya. It's a tropical fruit. Uh it grows a lot in Hawaii. Everybody loves them but the bad thing about it in California, they're really hard to make it through the winters. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how I went through the process of getting this type of a a small young tree onto the rootstock of uh of oak leaf papaya.

[00:01:34]Now the thing about papayas is they're really a pain to graft because not only are they hollow, but they also have a lot of sap and some of the papayas different varieties of papayas are not uh cross-compatible.

[00:01:48]Uh or excuse me, graft-compatible. But um what I have here is I and I don't have a uh uh um, an oak leaf rootstock.

[00:01:57]I just have the one that went to this.

[00:01:59]So, here we have a piece of the rootstock, and I'm going to use it for my demonstration. So, what we're going to do is is most of you may know, grafting is a matter of taking the budwood from one tree, a branch, or so on and so forth, and putting it on the stock of another.

[00:02:17]And [snorts] for and like I said, I'm mentioning I'm using this piece as an example because I don't have a full full-size piece. But, what you want to do is you want to take, assuming that both of these are in the ground in the same pot, you [snorts] want them to be both rooted in, both healthy growing, and in the same pot. And then what what I did was I took my grafting knife, and this is a really darn good Italian grafting knife.

[00:02:44]What you want to do is you want to you want to make a couple slits along the trunk.

[00:02:51]W- Make them straight as possible.

[00:02:54]You want to make them You want to make two lines, and the goal is to expose the cambium of the papaya.

[00:03:04]>> [snorts] >> The papaya seedling.

[00:03:06]I don't know why it keeps going that way.

[00:03:08]>> [snorts] >> You want to completely expose the cambium.

[00:03:21]Let's see if we can do this.

[00:03:23]You want And it doesn't really matter, you don't you don't have to be too delicate because the cambium is deep below the >> [snorts] >> It's deep below this bark level, if you want to call papaya bark.

[00:03:38]And you And it's really hard to see it, and it And And And the other thing is um, papayas, they tend to, uh, excrete a lot of of milky sap.

[00:03:49]So, what you want to do is you want to get down deep into that. This is rough compared to like say grafting avocados.

[00:03:55]You want to get down deep.

[00:04:00]See, that's not the cambium layer.

[00:04:01]That's still the bark.

[00:04:03]So, what I got to do is I got to dig this thing out. I literally use a screwdriver to dig this out all the way down into the cambium layer.

[00:04:14]That cambium layer is the lifeblood of the of the plant.

[00:04:20]>> [snorts] >> You want to get it all the way down to the cambium layer.

[00:04:25]Now, you have to experiment, but see right there that light that light part right there, that's that's where the cambium is.

[00:04:38]And it's rough, but now how do you find the cambium layer on the on this this guy? Well, you're pretty much not going to. So, what I did was I basically cut down to where I think the cambium is.

[00:04:57]Basically, almost cutting the the root this bud stick, which is actually it's called approach grafting.

[00:05:06]You want to find You know that I'll see if the camera lady can see. I actually can see the cambium layer. It's right there.

[00:05:14]And it's exposed. Unfortunately, this thing's not exuding a lot of sap.

[00:05:18]Now, what you want to do is you want to put those two together and bind them.

[00:05:24]You want to put those two together and you want to bind This is now is the root stock and this is the the scion. It's actually an actual live plant.

[00:05:35]But, what I do is I take some of this budding tape. You can take In this case, it's uh my favorite grafting tape parafilm M.

[00:05:46]And [snorts] you want those pieces, the two pieces to get fit together, the cambium layers to blend. So, what you want to do is, assuming this is both of these are in the ground, you're going to have to work around it. But, what I do is I tighten that up like this.

[00:06:09]And you can add even some more like some of the green green tape to make sure that this that stays. And And honestly, the top doesn't need to remain on.

[00:06:20]But, see, that's basically what I did.

[00:06:22]It's an approach graft.

[00:06:25]And it And And assuming that this is a root rooted um oak leaf papaya, I have now mated the two uh solo papaya to an oak leaf papaya tree.

[00:06:37]And that's what we get here. Now, after about a couple couple weeks, just like any other tree, you can cut the top off the oak leaf papaya, like I did here.

[00:06:47]And that is a fully grafted solo papaya on an oak leaf papaya which is no longer even in the papaya family. It's a Vasconcellea or something like that family.

[00:07:02]So, that's pretty much it. And that will provide you That should provide you.

[00:07:05]Now, we're going through an experimental time because I've never overwintered an oak leaf with a solo papaya graft on it.

[00:07:13]I've never overwintered it in You know, I would think that the solo papaya being sensitive to uh temperatures below 30°, I would think that the leaves might not be able to handle our cold weather, but the so uh but the oak leaf papaya is hardy to 25°, which we rarely see here.

[00:07:32]So, what you've done is you've put a sensitive papaya onto an oak leaf papaya so that it'll survive our cold chilly soil during the winter. My name is Jeff.

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