When do paw paws normally break dormancy in relation to other fruit trees?
I can tell my seedlings are alive but still asleep.
We have nectarine, peach, and Asian plums budding but most euro plums still asleep.
When your paw paws wake up, what other fruits are in the same time frame?
Last season none of my paw paws woke up, is why I am asking.
They are one of the last fruit trees to wake up for me. Usually mid-May. They seem to wake about the end of apple blossom time here.
Thank you! I feel better now.
My apples are barely showing leaf sprouts.
I bought grafted paw paws 2 yrs ago, neither woke up. This year I have a dozen seedlings, hoping for better luck.
I hope you have great success! Are they wild seedlings, or from cultivars?
Thank you!
The seedlings are supposed to be from cultivars (bought from Fruitwood) but I also have two bigger paw paws (4-5 ft) coming from Ison’s and I am not sure where they got them from. Could have dug them up in the wild for all I know.
Cool! I have 3 seedlings from Fruitwood nursery as well. They have done well for me so far; I planted them last year. You did the right thing buying potted plants, as they greatly resent root disturbance.
Same here in C NH. Mid-Mayish along with my northern Catalpas.
In southern NH, I find they wake up around the same time as my apples, maybe a smidge behind. I saw slight bud swell a few weeks ago, and they’re about ready to pop. No green yet, but the buds are definitely progressing.
I think it’s also later on the west coast (even relative to most other fruit trees). Cooler night temperatures seem to hold them dormant longer than most things. My three grafted pawpaws (4th leaf) look mostly still fully dormant here, while apples are flowering and leafing out vigorously.
Only one of the three pawpaws has a single terminal bud starting to expand. Last year we had a colder than usual spring and the pawpaws didn’t get going until June.
It’s a struggle to get the soil temps up locally here between the prolonged snow pack, north side of a hill, and my overall wet soils to begin with. 4” and 8” depth temps are both 45° this morning. Mine don’t really start breaking bud until closer to 55°. Thankfully I’m not in a frost pocket.
Well, that explains it. It’s 39f here this morning. No wonder they are still asleep.
Yeah, my experiences are much more relevant for eastern Mass than for most of New Hampshire. I’m only a few miles from the border, in town in a decent sized city, on the south side of a hill (but still at low elevation), and away from the moderating coastal influence. Basically, about as warm as it gets in the state!
There’s a diurnal and seasonal lag with soil temps…especially wet soils. July is the only month I haven’t personally seen 30s here although historically it’s happened. A random low in the 30s shouldn’t set your subsurface soil temps back too much. I presume it’s well above 39° below the skin surface.
What kind of probe are you using to measure that? One data point I’ve not yet been collecting is soil temperature, so it’s on my list of things to get. I think I’d ideally want something like a large instant-read meat thermometer, except calibrated for normal soil temperatures rather for cooked food temperatures.
In terms of air temperatures, it’s been in the 30s a lot recently here, one night down to 32.5 a few days ago, so the soil is probably still pretty cool too:
I just got mine a couple weeks ago that I ordered last fall and they are fully leafed. Broke dormancy almost immediately.
A Davis Instruments soil station to go along with my weather station. I have the Watermark soil moisture sensors and leaf wetness as well.
I’ll add that I find the mean temp over the last 5 days is a decent proxy for that 4 to 8” depth layer. We’ve had a lot of 45-55° highs and 30-40° mins the past week so the soils are stuck in the mid 40s.
You’re a lot warmer in 9a.
