shotgun
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Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:28 am
Location: eastern panhandle w.v.

PAW PAWS

Hi All
Want to try to grow pawpaws / last fall had 40 50 pawpaws just through them in the back of the compost pile got Zip / Have dun this with apples , peaches & pair / Have traded & given away many / now going to try pawpaws in pots
Question : lay the pawpaws on top of soil?, plant hole fruit ? or remove seeds & plant

In righting this may have answered my own question ( Try all three ? )

Any body with Exp. please weigh in all ideas needed

Thanks

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I have heard that paw paw seeds are only viable for a short time — plant within a month after extracting from ripe fruit. (I think this is typical of most tree fruit seeds — they need to be put/kept in moist soil not dried out).

I asked a member on this forum for seeds when she posted about starting to harvest from a nearby paw paw thicket, and she sent me some right away packed in a ziplock with moistened ...something — vermiculite? paper towel?. Since paw paw seeds need winter stratification, I planted some of them in strategic spots around the garden, and also sowed some in pots to leave outside. I planted the seeds at twice the seed thickness — envisioning squirrel forepaw depth.

As it turned out the ones in pots didn’t sprout, but seeds in three locations ... maybe more, sprouted. I think I failed to recognize some of the seedlings. At any rate, I have three paw paw tree-lets from those seeds. One of them was in a nice bed, one was planted next to two other pre-existing young trees, and third was in my children’s old sandpit. The one next to the other two has since failed, I think (too wet? too sunny? Too much competition? North-facing — too cold? ... the two older trees are doing well and have been blooming for last three years , though no fruits) The one in the sandpit is struggling and is very short (too sunny? too dry?), and the one in same bed with a failing plum and a crabapple — rich soil; dry, shady except when sun is directly overhead — is actually doing well — 5+ feet now after four or five years.

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!potatoes!
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Location: wnc - zones 6/7 line

I know you don't want them to dry out. I had lots of pawpaws last year and stockpiled the seeds in a ziplock in the fridge. it took me longer than I had expected to get them planted, so they were kind of a moldy mess when the time came. I rinsed the worst of the mold off and planted them in a bed in the garden and now have a bed full of seedlings. it did take a while for them to germinate. I don't think I saw any until mid-july (planted in november).

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

@!potatoes! I’m certain that you know what to do and have this under control, butI wanted to point out for those who are not aware that paw paws are not easy to transplant due to long taproot.

I should also mention that the containers I attempted to plant the seeds in were milk cartons and tall used tree nursery pots that those older paw paws came in. What you said about them not sprouting until so late was interesting — maybe I had given up on them too soon and stopped taking care of the containers. I’ll file that away for the future in case I ever try growing them from seeds again.

— will you be grafting onto them or are you going for the seedling segregates?

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!potatoes!
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Location: wnc - zones 6/7 line

well, for most of my pawpaw trees, the rootstocks are seedlings from orchards full of cultivars. for those, I'm very interested in seeing what the fruit is like - so I'm training them into two-leader trees, and will graft one side over to known cultivars, and will let the other side produce its own fruit.

with these new seedlings, they're from wild/unselected fruit (and a few cultivars that were likely pollinated by wild/unselected trees). combine that with the fact that my property is very nearly at full pawpaw saturation (I might be able to squeeze another 2 or 3 in, bringing the total to around 30)...so these seedlings will likely mostly be sold and/or given away. I was mostly germinating them to avoid just tossing them in the compost (which usually gives a few compost pile seedlings, but not anywhere near as many).

the taproots are fairly long, but we've had good luck transplanting when dormant. I feel that the danger of transplant issues with taproot damage (as well as the danger of sun damage on very young plants) gets repeated a lot, but is probably overstated. I've seen trees with accidentally short-cut taproots do fine (maybe a season or two of lag while they get situated), as well as seedlings that sprouted into a full-sun situation and thrived. sprouting in deep shade and then moving to full sun's not a good idea, but not only for pawpaws! all that said, it's probably best to heed both of those warnings, but not the end of the world if it's not possible.

Nyan
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Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:44 pm
Location: North Alabama Zone 7B

I've had good luck with just popping seeds out of slightly overripe fruits and immediately planting them in the 24 inch deep nut tree pots, sunk into holes dug under an old plum tree (for the shade). I've probably got 15-20 ready to transplant right now, so I just have to wrestle the pots out of the ground and separate the individual trees for transplanting.

I used a growing medium of half garden soil and half (mostly broken down) compost to keep them moist between irregular waterings.

Our paw paw seedlings always come up in early to mid July if planted the fall before. Actually, I read somewhere that they spend the spring just growing the tap root before actually putting up a stem and leaves above ground. Probably a survival adaptation I guess.

I was going to plant these down by the creek near our place, but when I scouted the area last fall, I found a couple of hundred wild ones already growing there...

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Lindsaylew82
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They’ve got all the parts to self pollinate, but they have to be cross-pollinated. Bees don’t like those stanky flowers either (they make me gag... dramatically... :roll: ). Such a tasty fruit to come from roadkill-smelling flowers! There’s a beautiful single tree on the campus that I attended, never with any fruit on it.
I sat with my grandmother recently, showing her photos of my friends paw paw pull from the past year, and my desire to possess them (I’ve been looking... Not with much effort, but enough to be green about that massive haul of deliciousness), and she told me how they used to care for them! She said that they’d throw all their kitchen and meat scraps underneath the trees to attract flies during bloom.... the kind that like rotting flesh and decay.

I imagine collecting pollen from one plant, and hand pollinating the others might do the trick, too!



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