You touch on an additional point to remember @DennisD…spring and summer is the best time to transplant…not fall as you might for many trees. I have some that have obviously grown through the bottoms of their pots…and I’d not be afraid I’d lose them if I moved them or put in a bigger pot, or planted them now. (Maybe if ‘monsoon season’ here in KY continues as it has the last 3 weeks, I’ll find time to up-pot a few).
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This might seem like common sense, so please forgive my ignorance, am I supposed to leave the bamboo in the hole or take it out?
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Remove it…but even using one to begin assumes deep loamy soil…not going to help in heavy clay or gravely soil. (Sorry, Bark…you can jump on my next one).
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I’m just going to try a bunch of methods. I have at least 65 seedlings to experiment with. I’m going to take everyone’s advise and I’ll try to come back and let interested parties know how the experiment is going. Thanks, everyone! 
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Yes I have killed a few with dormant transplants the roots have to be active to recover from shock
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Yes, I probably wouldn’t normally have the patience for that extra year myself!
But, having been given some seeds about 4 years ago and not know if they’d been dried out, or if they’d had enough cold stratification, I planted about 3 seeds to each one gallon pot. Since at least one came up in all but a pot or three…and I still have not bumped most of them to a bigger pot yet…I noticed a little guy (or girl I suppose) here or there coming up the second summer in the pots that already had one or two pawpaw seedlings
in them.
And, I’ve seen that, once I got to paying attention, in other plantings…a stray little fellow coming up beside a six or eight inch tall year old plant.
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I took a couple of those pots that had three about 18" tall in one pot and potted them one to a pot…just 15 or so days ago. They’re doing OK.
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The advice I gave to a person on the group was to loosen the soil with a tiller or shovel as wide and deep as wanted. (12-18" I suppose). and as deep. Then plant their pawpaw seeds and put up shade screening so the wind wouldn’t take it. Fast forward 4-years and one is 12 feet tall and flowering this year. Others within the same range.
What I’m doing is tilling and then returning with my shovel to turn the soil over and raise it back up to above ground level after tilling. A couple weeks and the tilled soil is sunken. That’s when I get my shovel and pull it above grade. Then I poke a hole and either plant a seed with a germinating radicle or, a seedling in a flat.
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@DennisD
When pawpaws are planted at Fall, you need to make a circle the same size as a ‘big hug’ if you were to put your arms in front of you which shows you how round/diameter of the mulch at 4" deep is going to be surrounding 1st year pawpaw seedlings. That’s advice given upon me from Tom Wahl (Red Fern Farm.)
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Looking for some advice myself and this seems like a decent thread.
I currently have 5 pawpaw seedlings (just two true leaves each) in 2 litre milk cartons with the tops cut off. I won’t be in a position to plant them in the ground for probably 2-3 years (going to take me that long to buy land). What should I do with them over the winter (I have a greenhouse, it gets down to about -15 Celsius at the coldest but hovers around freezing all winter), and when should I transplant them in to other pots? Further, what size pot should I move them to next?
Thanks in advance for the help everyone, pawpaws are not native here, and I’ve never once heard of anyone else growing them here either, so I’m really just going off of internet advice.
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A 1 gallon nursery container should be adequate, or a 1.5 gallon if the taproot is big. At least for the first year. I have some 3 footers sitting in 1.5 and 2 gallon pots. (You’ll have to convert that to liters, I’m not sure of the standard sized pots in Canada.)
I’ve had seedlings come up in both August and September that made it through the winter at a high percentage here in zone 6b in one gallon pots outdoors under shade trees.
And at least one of about 3 I had at the time made it through -19F one winter in a one gallon sized nursery pot.
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I have left Pawpaw seedlings in 2 liter plastic drink bottles,for at least two years.They can be transplanted,as they start growing in Spring,to taller containers,like over 38 cm.
My climate is different than yours.Here,the average Winter low is about 8C.
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Solid, frozen rootballs for several days in a row is when damage sets into the roots. It won’t kill the top of the tree whatsoever, but, eventually you’ll kill all the roots.
It has to be a frozen solid rootball. So, if your climate/greenhouse does not keep the soil consistently frozen, you should be okay.
What people in the business of growing do is to keep their greenhouses heated ~ like this:
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@Barkslip My greenhouse doesn’t stay frozen all the time, no, but it’s not heated. It actually gets somewhat warm there on sunny winter days. It’s say it fluctuates between +5 and -5 throughout the winter in there.
The alternative that I usually use with other plants is burying the still-potted plants in the ground, and I’ve never had a plant die over winter on me that way. Simulates being actually planted, but allows them to be moved again in spring.
That’s why I wrote my response to your question… hope it helped.
Re-pot when rootbound but probably not at Fall if avoidable.
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@Barkslip I gave it another read and I fully understand what you’re saying now, I misread it the first time. Your reply does help, thanks!
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I had pretty good success transplanting some wild ones this past year, I’d say about 75%. I did it in the late winter when they were still dormant. I’d say with a better technique than I used (I just hacked at them with a shovel and shoved them in a bag to bring back to bury them in the ground) you could probably get a better rate of success than I did. The ones that failed seemed to either get damaged a lot by critters this past year or got too much sun while in a pot (shaded ones in pots did well, in-ground ones did fine either way excluding critter damage).
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cool!
thanks man!
later!
I have done the same. Stratified in fridge, however, then sowed in the veg garden. So far nothing to see. Are they regarded as difficult to germinate?