Hi i am from Serbia .
I have tree 6 years old pawpaws seedlings and they are growing fast and i have two grafted variety’s (sunflower and prima1216) and they are bought as 2.5 years old plants and in my garden they are two years and this is third year for that two named variety pawpaws and they grown maybe about 10-cm max in 2.5 years and look like baby plants.
All five of my asimina triloba trees are flowering but on this two named variety’s i removed all flowers so trees can grow better but seems no affect to grow on this two trees.
This is video of one of my seedling tree with fruits
I tried to graft pawpaw this year, about 20 grafts and only 2 takes
I have used grafting methods like bud grafting, side grafting, single cut grafting and about 20 days after grafting buds starts to swell and even some new growth starts on scion wood and looks like graft takes and after some time graft simple dries and dies.
That two successful grafts are side grafted on on older branch and now are about 5 cm long.
I have grafted pawpaws third year in row and first year from two grafts both takes but later in winter this root stock dies from some reason.
Second year grafting pawpaw from two grafts 0 takes, same situation like grafts in this year.
Here in my country i can buy only seedlings and there are no named cultivars of pawpaws, this is here exotic tree that grown only by few people and i bought my two named varieties from another country, but my named cultivars are growing very bad and i can’t get scion wood from that trees.
There are very good pawpaw seedlings. Once your seedlings start producing I would focus on propagating the most successful plants. Once your named variety grafts grow out you can make some air layers on their own roots and then you will have true to type trees. I say this because pawpaw become trees that send out many shoots from the roots later. Sometimes with wild seedlings (pears) I work with I might need to try 20 types of scions until I find one that’s compatible. Some wild seedlings refuse to take scions and others take scions easily. Those pawpaw that are easy to graft scion wood on you should propagate as rootstocks for new trees because you know they work for that purpose.
Is it possible to air layer pawpaw?, i heard that is impossible to do that, if you done that with success can you explain a little bit more?, do you have maybe some pictures of success on air layering pawpaws.
In my six years that i grow pawpaw i didn’t saw one root sucker around my trees, how old must be tree to start sending root suckers from roots?.
Two years ago i planted 4 stratified pawpaw seed directly in my garden and that seedlings grow very very slow, same seed planted in 2 liters plastic bottles grows almost 2 times faster, i also got some pawpaw bare root seedlings and now two years later that seedlings are barely alive.
I heard from few people that pawpaw can be grown from root cuttings, one gardener said that he transplanted seedling to larger pot and part of tap root was broken and after some time from that root started to grow new sprout.
Last winter i accidentally cut off part of my old paw paw tree it was about 20 cm long root, i try same thing but no success.
I had one 3 yrs old pawpaw seedling about 2 meter high and suddenly leafs start o go yellow and tree dies, but after some time on same spot young sprout grown from root.
I know that pawpaw can be successful transplanted because i done that on this tree that i posted in my video, at that time it was 2 yrs old seedling.
I usually have good luck with pawpaw cleft or bark graft. I chose a branch in the area with good sun light. I don’t graft them on the high tip part of the branch. I cut the whole branch off and leave about 6 inches from the main trunk and then cleft or bark graft them. I have stated many times in the past that I rubbed off all the new growths every 3-4 days below the graft union so all the saps only go to feed your scion. Many grafts will fail if you don’t take out those growths. I hope this will help you to be more successful with your pawpaw grafts.
Following the Tony’s advice I fed the pawpaws with high nitrogen. The second year plants are growing so good now. They are in full sun and this year they do not show any sun damage, although the weather was dry and hot.
Here is the biggest Allegheny pawpaw.
Here is a picture from this morning of my hand in comparison to the leaves to give you an idea of how well these are doing. My hands are pretty big. I am growing these in partial shade.
I’m sorry to hear about the trouble grafting. When I grafted, it was whip and tongue onto a young tree. I think I had 100% takes and assumed pawpaws were as easy as apple and pear from that experience.
Can you please tell me when is right time to graft pawpaws (when you do it), is it when root stock dormant or when buds starting to open small leafs or when tree have big leafs?.
I tried to graft when root stock have small leafs about 2-3 cm big.
I had some situations with chip budding on pawpaws, chip is green and looks like graft taken, bud start to leaf out and after some time leaf bud drops but chip is still green 3 months after grafting when i with knife cut in bark.
On one 2 years old root stock i have grafted with chip and seems graft is taken but nothing grows from that bud, i will try next spring to cut bark above that graft to try to push growth from grafted bud.
Mis, my first time of grafting pawpaws. Whip and tongue in early April when the rootstock looked dormant (but the other trees started to grow). Most people here do the grafting later though.
Antmary,
We will see how it goes. I’m going to plant another 25 next year. I’m going to try some in full sun since you’ve had pretty good luck with them. My family has never grown them like that before. They tried like I did and they died in full sun. Beside the pond they will have plenty of water year around. I have a perfect spot in full sun with a hill on one side I will back them up against. Got to try again since I see you all getting away with it.
I don’t know if you have access to any wild paw paws, or perhaps some named varieties if they are suckering, but @clarkinks is right (and has a great memory!) 3 years ago I did dig up some wild paw paw suckers. I read that it couldn’t be done because of the long tap root. And it did have a long tap root, but it actually worked. I’ve actually done it about 6 times and it worked 4 of the 6 times. I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I just dug as deep down as I could and got as many roots as I could- not just the main tap root that went back to the mother tree, but also some smaller roots too. The tap root actually doesn’t go down really deep like I expected. I goes down about 18 inches and then goes horizontal toward the mother tree. I got about 3 feet of that tap root and then cut it away from mother tree. I got a very large dirt ball and probably 3 other smaller diameter roots about 1-2 foot long. Put the whole ball in one of those big plastic storage bins, took it straight home, buried it loose dirt and kept wet for about a week- more water than you’d normally think was good idea but in nature all of mine were in wet dirt.
Sometimes the tree I dug up died all the way back to only 3 inches about the ground and it would take as long as 2 months before it would show a little bud of new growth. Other times, the whole transplanted tree lived. They look bad for about 2 weeks but then start perking up and eventually send out new green.
FYI, I dug mine up each time in very early spring. They were dormant, but actually had some bud swell once and still worked. The ones that have worked have all been about 2 feet tall when I dug them up. I provide sun protection/shade the first year, but I’m not sure if the is required or not.
Anyway, I hope this helps you or someone else here who had wanted to do this but read that it won’t work. Try it! I need to post a photo of my first 2. They are about 4 foot tall and a picture of good health now. The fruit from mom was WONDERFUL so I hope these bear soon.
Clark- That’s a very interesting idea you have about wide variation in scion compatibility on wild seedlings. I would like to use that as an excuse for my poor success with pawpaw grafts, say 25 to 40% takes. So thank you.
When it comes to pears that’s one of the reasons why they go with old home / farmingdale (ohxfxx) rootstocks is you could graft almost anything to them. Even ohxf not everything will take. Sometimes it comes down to the numbers when it hits you the scions are not compatible and that’s why they are not taking. You almost need to graft a couple hundred pears to see it. For example I graft douglas and most every scion takes but I have a seedling callery I stooled a few years ago and none of it’s offspring took scions of douglas. I grafted an old fashioned kieffer to one of it’s offspring as an experiment and it took and a hail storm broke it off. Now that kieffer and that Douglas are very compatible with one another. Now I know what’s compatible so next year all those pears will take scions. Fortunately I don’t have a lot of those. There are genetics to trees that are not always widely understood. The people who do know are not about to share that information because it’s part of the success of their business. I grafted a row of ohxf333 rootstocks with one type of scion (10 trees) and they all failed. The next row I used another type of scion on the same day and they all took (10 trees). 10 or so years ago I was still grafting with masking and duct tape and did not know about compatibility and would try to graft the same scions on the same tree 3 years in a row and it would fail every time and I blamed myself. Eventually a friend would send me some scions and I would have success on the same trees I failed with previously and I became suspicious it wasn’t always me. So many years ago now I started keeping track and it began to make sense. Clara frijs, Douglas, Kieffer, old home , Farmingdale, etc. are very compatible pears and will work on almost anything but not everything. Like the pears I’m sure pawpaw are no different. One thing I will say is those type of trees make you really good at grafting because you become much more careful! With all that said I have a neighbor that’s been grafting 4 years and the grafts all failed so this year he invited me over and 60% of the grafts took I used 60% one method with clara frijs, and 40% another method with douglas. The clara frijs took so now he knows what’s compatible and will top work a 30 foot Bradford next year. I’m in my mid 40’s now and grafted my first tree when I was in my early twenties. Those grafts I did first failed miserably for two reasons one they were not compatible and two because I grafted with sewing thread or dental floss and tried to seal it. So method and materials were wrong and to this day I still work on those two things.
SMC,
Have your Sphenadoah flowered this year. Mine looks like it has flowered. Quite surprising for the tree is so small. Last year, the leaves turned yellow to brown by Aug. I thought I lost it and the nearby Mango.
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