Nice. I’m at 43N and have never protected my seedlings from the sun and have never had a problem with scorch, but I use deep tree pots so they have long, deep tap roots. It’d be interesting to see how yours would do with direct seeding down there without protection. Maybe experiment with 1 or 2 plots without protection? I suppose the caveat would be possible drought conditions this summer and the seedlings not being able to acquire enough moisture to support the top growth achieved. I get consistent enough precip up here during the warm season since we can rely on synoptic systems and not just convective.
That’s a nice setup though. That’s how I envision trying a mini seedling orchard up here.
Well done! I will patiently wait to see how your trees turn out. Hopefully you got a few winners!
7 P’s (prior proper planning prevents p1$5 poor performance) and I’d say you have certainly done your preparation! As @RNeal learned, just make sure you are able to irrigate if things get too dry.
That meadow is basically a really wide creek bank. The constant water table is about 6’ down so I’m hoping that those long tap roots can make it there before a big drought comes.
I’ve sort of already done that experiment by accident. My original plan was to try the cheap and easy method of shading with field peas planted in the same hole with the pawpaw seedlings. That turned out to be less than optimal. Coverage ranged from perfect to zero. I ended up re-seeding about three times. And then the local deer population discovered the delicacy, so I had to scramble to put together mechanical shading. Of 17 early sprouts about 7 got full sun and were completely fried.
I’ve got several more seeds pushing up through the soil. those will stay indoors over winter. the two that got a little bigger with leaves are outdoors in shade and I’m planning to straw mulch over em for the winter just in case.
I have recently purchased a dozen pawpaw grafted trees from various places that range in size from over 6 feet tall to 1 foot. Only 1 of the trees has any branches (it is 16 inches tall). All the other trees (including those that are 6 feet or better) are a central leader only with NO branches. Why do these trees have no branches? When will they branch? Do I need to prune them in order to get them to branch, or just leave them alone?
The continuing saga of the legendary “Magnum”, Kentucky legend tree. I was told by Woody that It came from scion that he collected from an orchard in Kentucky. If there ever was a case of nursery hype, this appears to be a dandy. Actually, Blake Cothron had recently made the comment that Woodies Kentucky Champion description was a case of old nursery hype. At any rate, just thought I would provide the latest Intell on this mysterious cultivar. Gonna get some DNA testing going soon.
That would be wonderful. Maybe confer with @Richard as he has a very strong background in genetics and the math/statistics related to testing and the proper techniques and tools to provide accurate analysis.
Simply put, some tests are not the best for obtaining accurate results and Richard has done the research.
Checked it out and I am curious about a number of things. For starters, why is Susquehanna not included on the self-fertile list, nor in the thick skin category, ornamental, (it has especially attractive quilted leaves), nor best fruit for shipping?
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