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You can grow babaco in chilly ACT

Susan Parsons

Blooming: Mark O'Connor's mountain pawpaw.
Blooming: Mark O'Connor's mountain pawpaw.Graham Tidy

For Canberra's gardeners who enjoy experimenting with unusual plants, we have discovered a cold climate surprise. Mark O'Connor has found a way to get the babaco (Carica pentagona) to fruit in his home garden.

Babaco, the mountain papaya, is native to the sub-tropical highlands of Ecuador and dislikes frost on its leaves. Dr Louis Glowinski, in Fruit Growing in Australia, says babaco was taken to the outside world by plant hunter Alfred Heilbronn in 1922. It was introduced to New Zealand in the early 1970s, following expeditions to South America for plant material. Babaco produces 25 to 35 fruits a year and the economic life of each small tree is eight years. The plant is sterile and propagated only by softwood cuttings and they require no pollination.

The Endt family grew babaco commercially in the 1980s on Great Barrier Island and the crop fetched $4 a fruit in 1983. As well, the Endts' remarkable family property called Landsendt, in Oratia near Auckland, has a kauri homestead built in 1860 on the 8-hectare site of a historic dairy farm and their garden and arboretum have annual open days in May.

Fruits of labour: Mark O'Connor's babaco, a mountain pawpaw.
Fruits of labour: Mark O'Connor's babaco, a mountain pawpaw.graham.tidy@fairfaxmedia.com.au
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In Canberra, using the building skills of the O'Connors' near neighbour, Bernard Davis, an unheated greenhouse has been constructed against the northeast facing brick back wall of the house. It is 2.5 metres wide by 4 metres long, made from standard translucent polyweave plastic and the door is a sheet of transparent vinyl that rolls up like a blind. The top sits above the roof of the house to discourage possums from clawing their way across the structure and it is made from the second thinnest, UV stabilised table-top vinyl from Bunnings.

Knowing that the slight slope would provide good drainage, O'Connor placed a row of bricks on their side and filled the area with 10 bags of potting mix placed over the top of an old concrete patio.

This was then deep enough for the babaco plants, a small avocado, pepino bushes, a tamarillo, a passionfruit vine and a Sandpaper fig (Ficus coronata) that was fruiting in March.

Mark O'Connor tends to his greenhouse attached to his back porch, where he grows babaco and a mountain pawpaw. His pet dog Miss Tan, gets in on the action.
Mark O'Connor tends to his greenhouse attached to his back porch, where he grows babaco and a mountain pawpaw. His pet dog Miss Tan, gets in on the action.Graham Tidy

His first crop of babacos last November covered the kitchen table. The 22 ripe fruit, from three of the larger plants in his greenhouse, weighed about 700 grams each and were eaten at home and shared with others. Also known as ''champagne fruit'', the taste is effervescent, the skin is edible and there are no seeds. Babaco also contains the meat tenderiser papain.

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Rain from the roof spouting runs direct to the plants through a slit in the plastic but, during summer, O'Connor had to water the plants every two days. The ''trees'' had grown close to the roof of the greenhouse so have been cut back, but they are fruiting again this month.

While Mark O'Connor likes his babaco cut into quarters uncooked, dabbled with apple juice and stored in the fridge, his wife Jan prefers hers baked for 30 minutes at 180C with a sprinkle of brown sugar. A Bhutanese friend of the couple chops up babaco and eats it with cheese or uses it in curries.

Mark O'Connor's feijoa fruit.
Mark O'Connor's feijoa fruit.Graham Tidy

Feijoa footnote: Food and Wine readers might remember Mark O'Connor from a Kitchen Garden column published in 2012. His quest was to find improved feijoa trees for urban use, rather than the ''mongrels'' that were mostly grown in Canberra. As a result of the 58 responses from readers, he has now raised feijoa plants with olive-leafed foliage, myrtle-leafed (thinner than olive-leafed), slightly purple-leafed, very late and very early fruiting feijoas, one said to taste of wild strawberries and another with fruit that turns faintly red when it is ripe.

O'Connor is collecting feijoa fruit every day and it is placed on wire racks (oldest on the top row) in the kitchen to fully ripen and to get its seductive aroma. This season, if your feijoa shrubs or trees have exceptional foliage, flowers or fruit, please email O'Connor at: mark@australianpoet.com

>> Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.

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