Papaya guild suggestions?

We have lots of papaya plants around the place.  I was just wondering if anyone has tips about what I should plant with the papaya.

The Papaya plants do get frozen back regularly but they grow fast enough from the old roots that we still get fruit most years.  It is also possible to start seeds in early fall in pots and keep them protected in the greenhouse over winter and plant them out in spring (late Feb) to get fruit by November.

the site www.crfg.org should give some good advise in the fruit facts section.

I know the basics about "traditional" growing of papaya and banana.  I was just wondering about potential companion plants for them.

I've also got kinda an opposite climate to California, our cool season is usually not that rainy though this year is threatening to be odd.  Our rainy season is usually the hot season then into the cool/variable short winter then hot dry but humid spring into hot wet summer/fall.

here there's only two seasons wet and dry and never cold just high humidity, think i need to grow some gills

Are you looking for more trees like guava, what about gingers edible or flower, vines, passion fruit, kiwi fruit?

I've thought about kiwi and passionfruit but not gone to the effort to get any yet.  I don't think we like guava though so probably not worth trying the native maypop here that I've heard tastes kinda like guava but is related to passionfruit.

We are only sub tropical here so we do get freezes and I only have so much space that I'm protecting from cold.  (There is something of a cold frame over the aquaponics system that I will close up on frost/freeze warning nights but it will only save plants from the frost/freeze the plants have to be able to survive at least down to about 33 F or 1 C because I don't heat the cold frame.)

Papaya here just grows, and they get pretty tall too. Sometimes it can get interesting when you have a Papaya that is 10 meters tall (at least it seems that tall!) and you are shaking it to make a fruit drop. 

Lots of roots - and they go out some distance. I have never really noticed anything being planted with them, they just come up volunteer for us, and of course, we are in the tropics, so they don't get killed off by freezing weather.

how about sweet potatoes, nasturtiums and artichokes?

asmileisthenewak47 wrote:
how about sweet potatoes, nasturtiums and artichokes?

Ok, sounds interesting.  Curious, got any reasons for why you would pick those to go with papaya?

I might try the sweet potato at some point but not this comming year as we have had a horrible infestation of sweet potato weevils.

well, honestly i don't know much about papayas, but fruit crops tend to go well with tap rooted plants and ground covers and badly against fiberous rooted plants

also i like to eat all of those plants and they compete pretty well with weeds

I came across a spanish language video on youtube.  commercial papaya farmers have had good results inter planting with corn,  seems the corn keeps the bugs distracted from the Papaya.

tropicguy corn as in sweet corn in England the word corn  is used for any grain crop.
  In the long run could it increase the bugs interested in fruit and corn? Suppose it would also increase the predators of bugs that eat fruit and corn. rose

you could try things like ginger, lemongrass could probably work in there, and maybe chayote, or cho cho as its known in Jamaica.