Hello we have a young vineyard in north Georiga and will also be adding a 150 tree pawpaw orchard. Looking to share info and best practices in north georgia. Sam
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Just curious. What would you do with tons of fruit from 150 pawpaw trees?
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Welcome Sam!! What pawpaw cultivars are you planning on growing?
First, just a beautiful grove on a slope of our vineyard. Second, sell fruit to our customers in the fall/you pick. Long term, pulp.
SAM
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Some include;
Rappahannock
Shenandoah
NC-1
Prolific
Overleese
Allegheny
KSU-Atwood
Pennysalvania Gold
Potomac
Sunflower
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You might want to give Ron Powell a call or shoot him an email. He’s the president of the Pawpaw Growers Association (PGA - not golf) and organizer of the Ohio pawpaw festival. He has a planting larger than that in southern Ohio and he’s quite knowledgeable on which cultivars thrive better in the south.
But oh man, I just heard a story from an PGA member about a southern IL winery that went under because one year they had a bad batch of pawpaw wine after having a few years winning at the pawpaw festival. I hope your endeavors are much more successful.
Most vineyards and large scale plantings usually prefer to grow other fruit because the time to market is so slow, 6-8 years before they come into bearing and that’s only the start of fruiting. Those first couple of years, it’s not a lot of fruit. You probably need 10 years for the trees to hit max cropping. Then you can start collecting fruit from each tree by the bucket.
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I live in west central Georgia-Carroll County-and the biggest issue for me is water, the second soil quality, and the third ambrosia beetles.
During the years after I first planted my trees we had several summers of little to no rain. One summer we went almost two months without a drop. I’m convinced my trees would have died without a lot of supplemental water. Even so, many struggled. This year we had the wettest summer of the 23 I’ve lived in Carroll County. The trees thrived, continuing to put on new growth through August. I know you have cooler and perhaps wetter weather than me, but a drought the first or second year after you plant could be catastrophic, especially if you are growing in full sun.
Soil improvement has also greatly helped my trees, I believe. Lots of hard red clay here. Every year I’ve top-dressed with either 3-4 inches of woodchips or up to a foot of leaves. After 5 years, the soil finally is starting to look better. You probably have better soil than me, and of course I have no scientific evidence that this organic matter has made a difference, but the trees sure look healthier.
Ambrosia beetles have killed several of my young trees. They attacked some of my most vigorous growers. I recently saw a presentation arguing the beetles are only a problem for stressed trees, and had convincing data to back that up. All I can say is that my trees had done o.k. the prior year and appeared to be doing fine in the early spring. My guess is the trees’ roots were waterlogged because of the clay soil and wet winters. The biggest issue with these beetles is that once you see evidence of an attack, saving the tree is a real challenge, and impossible if a heavy attack. Again, you probably have a lot better drainage than I do so this may not be a problem for you. There are multiple ambrosia beetle threads on the forum, probably the most relevant is Ambrosia beetle on paw paw
Welcome to the Forum! Good luck with your endeavor!
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Paw Paw tree are a weird breed of tree. They grow in colder zones so will likely need a fair amount of chills hours I am guessing, each tree requires 30 inches of water a year, You need 2 varieties to get fruit, it takes forever to get fruit, the trees get massive and the fruit does not last long. All of these factors make it so many people do not want to grow Paw Paw commercially. Paw Paw is a specialty fruit and I know many will never try it. Without heading out to the mid east or somewhere like Oregon or Washington I know the chances of me every trying a Paw Paw are slim given I live in Colorado.