Prepare your soil. Choose a nutrient-rich potting mix for tropical plants, or make your own mix out of garden soil and 25-50% compost. As long as the soil drains well, the exact soil texture doesn't matter. Papaya will grow in sandy, loamy, or rocky soils.Prepare the seeds.Press seeds against the side of a colander to break the sac surrounding the seeds, without breaking the seeds themselves.Rinse thoroughly, then dry in a dark location on a paper towel.Plant as many seeds as you have room for to increase the odds of both male and female plants sprouting; you can remove the weaker plants later on. There is no feasible way to tell whether a plant is male, female, or hermaphroditic before planting.Water the soil moderately well.Determine which seedlings to keep. Approximately two to five weeks after planting, some of the seeds will germinate, and emerge through the soil surface as seedlings. After giving them a week or two to grow, pull out or cut the smallest seedlings.Once plants are flowering, remove excess male plants. If you still have more plants than you want to end up with, wait until the plants are about 3 feet (0.9 m) tall to see what sex each plant is. The male plants should flower first, producing long, thin stalks with several flowers. Female flowers are larger and near the trunk. In order to produce fruit, you only need one male plant for every ten to fifteen females; the rest can be removed
