Very interesting…Anyone else find that tree tubes have a positive effect on photosensitivity with young pawpaw?
Planted in sandy soil 2 small Pawpaws, about 1 ft tall in 2013. I planted they in their final destination rather then pots since I read they don’t like to be moved. They get about 3 hrs of mid afternoon sun since they were planted and are doing fine. I never mulched them but do water them occasionally. They are healthy but growing very slowly.
Here are the pictures I promised in a previous post. The first one is of the pawpaws I started under lights this winter. They are now in one gal RM2 containers. They seem to be doing pretty well for 6 months of age.
These have been kept on my lower deck since they went outside in mid April. They get a few hours of early morning sun and then are mostly shaded by the upper deck. After noon they are in complete shade. I took two of them and moved them to the edge of the same deck but they were no longer under the upper deck. In this position they got morning sun until about noon and then shade. This is what hey looked like after about a week of that exposure:
They are now back under the upper deck recovering.
Some years ago I planted quite a few grafted pawpaws and lost most of them. They were indeed very sensitive to sunlight (I’ve read the UV light is the biggest problem). I made wooden boxes with the tops open to shade them but the boxes got too hot in our hot summers and tried to cook them.
Another problem is that the spots were too wet. Pawpaws need lots of moist soil but they can drown like any other fruit tree. I finally ended up building mounds for the pawpaws (like I now do for all my fruit trees) and the pawpaws in the mounds had much better survival.
I planted some pawpaw seeds a couple years ago and the seedlings are growing. I plan to try to use them as rootstocks.
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Very interesting. If it is specifically the UV spectrum that is a problem, it would certainly explain how blue tubes would help. I’ve got some blue protex tubes at the farm. Maybe I’ll bring one or two home and tube a couple of the smaller ones and place them in the spot that burned those two larger ones. It would be really good to know if this would be sufficient protection from the sun for the first couple years.
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That sounds like an experiment worth doing.
From Chris Siems at Wilson Foresty Supplies who has grown many pawpaws in tree tubes:
Paw paw are a challenge to get started. The product you definitely want is
the 4ft Tubex Combi Tube tree tube. Vented to allow hardening off for
winter and moderate temp in summer. Great results.
The place to buy is www.treeprotectionsupply.com - they are set up to serve
(small) orders of this size. Their tubes are shipped with mesh caps that exclude
bluebirds.
:
:
Is there something specific that differentiates that tube from other vented tree tubes for pawpaws or is that just part of a company pitch for the tube? If there is something specific about the tubex tube that applies to pawpaw, please let us know.
Jack
These days I don’t need to start paw paw from seeds anymore for rootstocks. Three years ago I did an experiment to see if I can clone more paw paw rootstocks for grafting. I sacrificed a three years old paw paw seedling by cutting the whole tree down one inch below the soil and see if I can stimulate suckering. Sure enough, the following year the tree sent out at least 20 suckers and these guys will not get sun burns, since they are not seedlings.
Tony
regarding this… The product you definitely want is
the 4ft Tubex Combi Tube tree tube. Vented to allow hardening off for
winter and moderate temp in summer. Great results.
I know that my friend has had winter kill of paw paws that grew back from the roots. The peaches and apples have not had winter kill issue though. So perhaps there would be a late season time to remove the tubes?
I have not seen that tube to know its color but I know it’s vented for automatic fall hardening off.
Most tubes are vented these days so that is not a differentiator. Are they dual wall tubes. I have read some articles about folks using dual walled tubes for pawpaw.
Tony,
Thanks for the heads-up. I had no pawpaw to start with, so I had to start somewhere. From what I understand, they are fairly true to seed. The first set of seeds I got from Cliff that came from some of Jerry’s 250x39 trees that produced some very large fruit. I had great germination success with these. I then emailed KSU and they sent me ten seed from 2013 that had been stratified and then ten from 2014 that had not been stratified. These did not have as good germination rates as the seed from Cliff, and seemed to grow a bit slower. One of the guys either on here or garden web (can’t remember) also sent me some stratified seeds. So far, germination rates on these are poor but there is still time for more of them to germinate.
I doubt I’d graft any of the 250x39 trees. I may end up grafting some of the others eventually. It is good to know that they stool for down the road. They sure are slow growing from seed.
Forest- Here’s the product page for the Tubex combi-tube. It is double walled. I have not seen or used it.
https://www.treeprotectionsupply.com/index.php/tree-tubes/tubex/tubex-combitube-4-ft/
Here’s a 2005 NAFEX message from Lucky Pittman to Scott Smith:
Scott,
I’ve used both Tubex (www.tubex.com) and TreePro(www.treepro.com)
shelters. Think I prefer the 2-ft Tubex types for small pawpaw seedlings.
I’ve seen folks use plain old 5-gallon plastic buckets - cutting the bottom
out of them and placing them around the seedlings - they work pretty much
the same as the tree shelters, providing some shading & protection against
wind dessication - just a significantly wider diameter.
Lucky
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Thanks! Are folks using tubes with older trees or just for the first two seasons when they are especially photosensitive?
I also struggled getting my pawpaws to survive. I’ve gotten tubes from tubexusa and plantra and the survival rate has greatly improved. I’m only about two years in but this last winter I didn’t lose any. Before the tubes I’d keep the pawpaws throughout the summer on my covered deck in pots and still lose about 40% of them.
I tried overwinter a bunch of paw paw seedlings in the garage over the winter and they all died. I should have had them in the ground.
That Tubex Combi Tube is double walled which my source says is essential for pawpaw. Many other tree tubes are single walled. That’s the difference.
Saw this pawpaw topic and thought I would add my experience so far.
I started with 3 nursery-grown grafted pawpaws, August 2012. I bought them then because I closed on a new place and wanted to get started. Not knowing better, I planted them directly in my orchard, and other than watering well and mulching, did not give them any protection. I have NC-1, Sunflower, and Rebecca’s Gold.
Deer browsed some of the leaves. One - Rebecca’s Gold - was completely eaten off by a rabbit, but has re-grown.
I added deer fencing same as my other fruit trees. If a leaf sticks through, deer eat it.
Since then I added Mango, bought from a mail order nursery in a long narrow tree pot.
NC-1 grew the fastest, with Sunflower just behind it. By end of 2015, NC-1 was 6 foot tall, SUnflower about 5 foot tall. Both bloomed last year. I cross pollinated, got fruit set on Sunflower but they fell off.
Photo is May 2015
I have given them a nitrogen fertilizer, similar NPK makeup as fish emulsion, to stimulate growth. They were lush last year and added about 12 to 18 inches of height.
SInce these were grafted, I did not give any sun protection. Our summers are hot, dry, sunny despite a rainy spring and fall.
I read the roots are delicate, so I did not unwind coiled roots, or prune them, which I do for almost all other trees.
The 2 larger trees have lots of flower buds - rough count 40 each, and Mango has one or two despite only being a foot tall.