Hi Len,
I read in Esther Deans book that if you take a pendulum and hold it above the seed or plant that if it remains static or rocks to and fro then it is male or negative if the pendulum
swings around in a circular orbit it is female or positive she suggests that you only plant the positive or female for the best produce results.I must admit that I thought it was a load of hoohaaa but when I did the test it gave results as above so for the time being I am using this method for seed and seedling selction only time will tell if it works, the jury is still out on this one,I keep an open mind .
Cheers JK

I've heard of doing that on pregnant women to find out the sex of the baby. I think the results were right 50% of the time :)

I don't know about the seeds but when we were at school I remember a lot of us giggling schoolgirls sitting round doing just that over our wrists. Haven't done a follow up to see if it worked.

A Paw paw grower told me that he plants all the seeds and when he transplants them he has found that the ones with the straight tap root are the males and the others are the females.

Haven't tried that as we stick to the bi-sexual paw paws, find them the best tasting.
Marion

mmmmm yeh well 50% hit rate sounds better than the current rate of about 10% or so of seeds planted turning into female trees. tried the rusty nail routine driven into male trees but that was a furphy lol.

anytime i transplanted seedling all the roots looked the same to me but maybe just maybe hey. tried a bi-sexual one once was most dissapointed when it turned out to be a male it did fruit but nowhere near as prolific as female trees can. rang nursery who rang the growers and they said they could only guarantee a hit rate of 20% trees sold being truely bi-sexual or female.

of course the red ones are i am told all bi-sexual sorts. have heard of people simply buying a yellow paw paw liking the taste and planting some seeds and getting predominately female trees.

anyhow don't know if i have the patience for the pendulum thingy so will plant a wack of seeds and see waht happens.

len

In my experience male trees seem to fruit after a couple of years. We planted a heap of papaws in our rainforest garden to help fill it up until other trees were big enough. We left many of our males in the ground and most start producing female flowers after a couple of years. Nice fruit too.

yes they do fruit just that someone gave me fruit from their trees nicer than ours so want to plant seeds.

as we may not be here much longer! got a contract now wanted to plant some in the new suburban place but won't have a lot of room to grow lots of trees just to get a female or 2.

and the way this forum is going i probably won't be hanging around here much longer either not ready to change things on the computer just to suit here the trouble you got to go through to get pages loaded and get messages submitted don't think it is worth it. post in the forums i hang around in are falling away as well.

len