Are those leaf buds? Very interesting looking. What is your current temperature range?
Where I am, we can have hail on Mother’s Day, and we have a short season. We are not recommended to put things like pepper plants outside until June 1 which is technically just about the beginning of summer.
We had 8 inches of snow last Sunday.
Mine are just little seedlings, so I do not have any mature paw paws.
So I still have some waiting to do.
The tip is a leaf and there are also two flowers below the leaf pictured. The average annual last frost date is May 15th and first frost is Oct. 15th. Of course, that’s just an average and I am always hoping for no frost after late April. 
Either that you have the worlds first bell pepper tree
Very cool looking thanks for sharing.
I’m in NV, zone 7. My young trees are just starting to form buds.
As an aside. I have all mine under shade cloth except one that gets afternoon shade naturally.
Is it really necessary to provide shade for brand new trees (1 seedling and 5 cultivars all under 1’ tall)? I’m concerned that I’m potentially stunting their growth.
Hopefully someone with experience will respond, but everything I’ve read said they like to be shaded until they’re more mature.
Yes, for best results. If you don’t, your tree has a greater chance of dying.
I’ve never shaded a tree beyond the year I had it shipped to me. However I frequently have moist soil, plenty of clouds and precipitation, cooler seasons, and less intense insolation than in NV.
If you’re dealing with young trees you could really stress the foliage during your dry, sunny stretches with more intense heat. I think the 2 year shading rule is to allow the rooting to get safely established so the trees can survive stressing conditions.
Half shade and half sun is about right. Too much shade will hold them back. 50/50 is good.
Some of my seedlings are showing leaf tips today!!!
I had a handful (20 or so) seeds i stratified and just tossed into a shallow bucked of dirt and set in the corner of the greenhouse back in February, next to the persimmon bucket. I have long since parsed out the persimmon seedlings into their own containers, and decided to check on the pawpaws. To my shock many had been sending out a taproot, so I quickly took them all out and added about 12” of soil and carefully stuck them back (after reading I think this thread about how long the seedlings will send a taproot before leaves show) to allow the roots to develop more.
Ok so the point, it seems most of you prefer to let them grow at least one year before you disturb them and separate them out individually. Or should I try to separate them as soon as leaves show. The soil they are in is mostly peat to be able to separate things easily. I was planning on separating them sooner than later
I am sure an expert will help you with this, but I just wanted to say I did a lot of reading too about not disturbing the taproots so I had purchased super flexible 12 inch tall tree pots to accommodate the taproot and then so I could easily dig a hole and put the paw into the hole and then cut away The tree pot in hopes that the paw paw doesn’t realize it’s been transplanted lol. The tree pots don’t stand well on their own, so I put all 12 of them inside a bigger plastic pot to keep them upright. I have been letting them grow and didn’t plan to transplant them until maybe next year. That was smart to put them in something easy to sort them out of.
i was growing some pawpaw seedlings hydroponically last year and come fall i was going to bring them in and see how they do overwintering in the tent. they had some transition time in the garage before they went in the tent. it never froze but it did get pretty cool a few nights when they were in there over a few weeks.
once i got them into the tent i noticed that they started showing signs of what looked like brunt leaves even though they were under other plants canopy. so i moved them out of the tent as it kept getting worse. eventually one by one they started losing their leaves in what looked like a nutrient deficiency.
i think there might have actually been some burning going on but what i really think was happen is they were just going dormant. there is a single leaf holding on to one of the plants at this point. they all are still green under the bark and have small fuzzy buds. i dont see any root expansion at all though.
do yall think they just went dormant and how does their dormancy period work? are they on a timer of months on when to wake up? the temps are ~75F during the day and ~65 at night with ~16h light(they are still under canopy). you would think those temps would have woken them right back up 
