Growing Yams Near Papayas

SB comments:

“David – have you ever grown yams near papayas? Papayas have shallow root systems and I wonder if digging yams would disturb the papaya “trees”? How close/far away should yams and papayas be spaced? Also -similar questions for sweet potatoes instead of yams.”

Back in 2020, I received an email from a man named David who shared his food forest project. In it, he had sweet potatoes, yams, papaya, bananas and more, all growing together.

Papayas will get overrun by yams if you plant the yams right at their bases; however, sweet potatoes run underneath them quite happily. I don’t know how much the root disturbance hurts them when you dig the sweet potatoes, but I did have them planted together in my first full Grocery Row Garden project in the Caribbean.

We pretty much overlapped everything in there!

If you’re worried about the root systems, just plant the bases of your sweet potatoes a little farther from the trunk. The vines will still grow around the trunks and provide ground cover, but the main mass of roots you’ll be digging will be further out.

At the same time, I would also plant some right next to them. Then you can compare and see if it made a difference. You’ll know within a year or so.

The yams I would keep a little farther back, just because the vines are such aggressive climbers.

Have fun and don’t sweat it too much. Papaya grow so fast from seeds that you can always plant more if it doesn’t work out. I bet they do fine, though. Even with the root disturbance possibly lowering yields somewhat, you should still have a lot more yield from the space than if you just planted papaya or just planted sweet potatoes.

I do miss growing papaya. We have a few in the greenhouse growing in pots – maybe we’ll plant some more, right in the ground this coming spring when the weather warms up.