Babaco Papaya Ice Cream!

The greenhouse disaster I wrote about earlier in  http://lindafink.blogspot.com/2013/03/tragedy-in-greenhouse.html is a disaster no more! My tall Babaco Papaya plant had toppled over and broken from the weight of the four big papayas hanging from its top. After first duct-taping it back together, I read on the web that babacos are propagated by cutting the stem into one foot lengths and sticking them in dirt. So that's what I did. And hoped for the best.

I also read that babacos are usually picked when just starting to turn from green to yellow so I had hopes the four papayas would ripen off the plant. The first and biggest was showing a little yellow at the time and it did, indeed, ripen. It was so big that we were having a hard time eating the whole thing before it became overripe, so I decided to try blending the last fourth of it and adding it to the milk/sugar mix that I was turning into ice cream today. And so I did and it is delicious!! Babaco Papaya ice cream may be my new favorite flavor. And we have three more papayas to ripen, one of which is beginning to turn color as can be seen in the photo. Oh happy days!

 Even more happiness is evident in the greenhouse, where the three hunks of papaya stem are leafing out. The top segment had leaves at the time of the great fall and now has more plus at least one
papaya flower beginning!

The middle hunk of stem has little green beginnings at every node, although difficult to see in this photo.

The original bottom portion of the stem also has greenery appearing at the nodes. One of those is easier to see.

What I'll do with three babaco papaya plants, I don't know. I guess I'll be making lots of babaco papaya ice cream!