PawPaw question - transplant ok?

Putting them on N side of building or under shade trees gets much higher germination and survival the first year.
Some higher survival second year.
Third year they can take the sun.

They seldom germinate in sun.
They get killed by the sun if they do. (I’ve even lost 3 or 4 from sun after the leaves fell from the tree they had been under…as the seedlings had not been frosted on nor cotyledons or leaves colored yet.

I have had poor luck transplanting pawpaws. Also, I’m in zone 6a and I have always done much better with shade the first year. I use tree tubes

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That very long tap root thing may be a problem in this case. My wild muscadine and this pawpaw is growing just a few feet from a huge pignut hickory.

No doubt i will run into a mass of hickory roots there. Expect it will be impossible to get anywhere near 2 ft deep there.

I will check it out but dont have high hopes for that working out now. May just have to encourage it to grow up thru my muscadine to get more light there slowly.

If I have pawpaws growing up on this ridge under my muscadine… i am sure there are more down in my deep hollows. I will see if i can locate one this summer that may be easier to dig up. Perhaps growing in some nice deep root and rock free soil.

Thanks all.

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Well here is how it went on the pawpaw today. Did not take long to realize that digging it up was not possible. As expected that ground was full of hickory and muscadine roots.

So i let the little pawpaw remain there.

I did poke the growing tip thru my wire trellis… will have to clear that wire out as it grows more.
I also pruned my muscadine vine way back to get more sun to the pawpaws…

Notice i said pawpaw(s). Multiple…

There is this one by itself near the wire trellis front left.

And to the right… more back under the trellis… this multi stemmed seedling…

Ps… it is multi stemmed because i have been whacking it back each spring notknowing what a pawpaw was.

Then on the right up near the front of the trellis another even larger pawpaw… or two.

It’s reaching up thru the trellis wire already… and yes you can see where i whacked it off last year.

Now that i know what a pawpaw is i will let these grow and battle it out with my muscadine… which i can prune to help them all get along.

Pawpaws and muscadines… a fall treat for sure.

TNHunter

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I have a few pawpaws that have sprung up right next to my front walk, probably from me sitting on the front porch eating some I foraged along the Potomac and then just tossing the seeds in the front garden. One, in particular, had gotten probably almost 5 feet tall and was right against the front walk leaning into where we walk, so it had to be moved before it got too big.

I really wasn’t sure how much root I’d get based on it being against the cement walk, but was very pleasantly surprised to find it had some branching side roots instead of just the deep carrot root I expected. I cut off all the side branches to reduce the top and will probably graft it later this spring if it looks like it is leafing out pretty well. I’m tempted to let it grow for a year, but I’m impatient and will probably see if a graft takes this year since I have a lot of pawpaw scion wood.

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The other pawpaw thread I was reading today said people have better luck transplanting pawpaw right after they start pushing growth in spring, Not while dormant.

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I’ll have to see how mine does. We do have most things waking up now, probably 2-3 weeks earlier than they should.

I attempted to transplant a paw paw and failed badly. The roots all broke off.

This was a grafted paw paw I planted in the front yard years and years ago and it never grew more than a foot tall. The story I read is if the plant is shaded it just remains stunted until one of the trees in the over-story dies, lets in more sunlight, and then the paw paw takes off. That is what paw paws do in the wild.

I have two seedling paw paws (I could have grafted to them but I don’t have experience with paw paw and thought I would take a chance on whatever fruit I get). These trees are getting enough sun in the back yard that they are 8-feet tall. I thought to move the third paw paw to join them so it would thrive and set fruit.

Knowing about the taproot and the sensitive root hairs and the recommendation to transplant them with a large root ball, I trenched around the plant and then levered up the 2-foot diameter root ball, thinking this would gently extract the tap root. Wrong! There wasn’t a single tap root, there were three roots that went deep, and all three broke clean off.

My experience with an apple tree is that you can trench around it, and when you have freed enough ground, you can start pulling on it to extract it. I think that the story with a paw paw is not that it has a tap root – it has a fragile, brittle tap root.

I am thinking that the trench should have been closer to this small tree and go much deeper. You can’t lever it out – I think you have to trench down deep enough to however much root you think you can extract. You have to treat it like an “archeological dig” where you remove the ground around it with dental instruments.

I know I am in the denial stage of paw paw death, but I am attempting to root what remains of the plant in a pail of water indoors to attempt to resuscitate it.

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Do you have a picture of the roots? I know the common wisdom is that if you damage the roots, they’re done, but I’ve found as long as there is enough root and it is early enough in the season they survive. The one I transplanted last month is budding out all over right to the top, so I think it may be okay, even though I definitely lost a lot of root.

Right - I wouldn’t give up just yet.

I’m a serial pawpaw abuser, and I can tell you, from my experience, that there is nothing magical about pawpaw roots.
I’ve done ‘mass plantings’ in 3 gallon pots, and at the beginning of the next growing season, hacked off a 4" thick mass of circling roots at the bottom of the pot, added a new 4" of soil and dropped that pot-shaped rootball right back into the pot to grow for another year, because I didn’t have time to fool with them or a place to put them.
Similarly, I kept one batch of seedlings grown from purchased named-variety seeds ‘imprisoned’ in 20 oz Styrofoam cups for 3 or 4 years… they’d root out through the drain holes, but I’d just cut them loose from the soil underneath, pull them out, whack off the circling roots, add a little more dirt, and stick 'em back in. I finally planted them in a permanent location, and 15-20 years later, they are doing just fine.
Now… as to digging and transplanting pawpaws… I’ve done very few… and survival rate has been low… but I’m a notorious ‘plant them and walk away’ type, for most seedling stuff, regardless of species.
I would strongly advocate following Neal Peterson’s recommendations on digging and transplanting…

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I have several that the taproot has rotted over the course of the cold…but the foliage says they’ll live.

So… i have 4 pawpaw seedlings growing under my muacadine trellis. I suspect that a coon or possum planted those… pooping while eating muscadines.

What would you do with these two ?

Growing right next to each other.
They are the two largest ones… but growing right side by side. Is that ok for pawpaws… or should i remove the smaller one ?

The others are 3-4 ft apart.

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I would remove one of those verticals on the tree on the right.
Some say you can plant multiple pawpaws “in the same hole.”

Otherwise you should be able to dig a good ball around them then gently remove the soil and separate the roots (I.e. bare root them) and plant as you wish. Would definitely shade them and keep watered.
I did this last year and lost one but I kinda followed the Lucky_P Manual of Pawpaw Care on that one :crazy_face::rofl:

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@TrilobaTracker — I looked at digging one of those 4 up but there is a mass of hickory and muscadine roots and lots of rocks in there… I decided to just let them be… and they can fight it out with my muscadines… with some moderation from me… to make sure the pawpaws make it.

The location they are growing in is shaded most of the day by the edge of my woods (Oak, Hickory trees mostly) Once leaves are out on the trees… they are only getting 2-3 hours of evening sun.

The rest of the day indirect light only shade by large trees.

Will a paw paw grow and produce fruit in a location like that ?

If so… I might look into grafting some named varieties on them next spring.

I expect they might like morning sun better… but hey this is what luck gave them.

Thanks

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Sounds good :grinning:
Yes with some hand pollination especially you should be able to get some fruit. but certainly full sun is required for large crops.

This is what is left of it after three root branches fractured off when I levered up the root ball that I trenched around. I have been soaking it in water since late Saturday’s mishap.

Y’all are scaring me here…

I grafted a Marshmallow pawpaw 2 summers ago. It returned last year and while it is growing, it is also quite stunted in the shade of a few (ancient) lilac bushes.

The tree is probably 20 inches tall with the graft comprising about 12 inches of that.

I planned to move it this spring (and I will wait until it pushes growth).

Given its age and size would you think that shading is still necessary?

Scott

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I would, for insurance. Should help with transplant shock and reduce water loss.

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Assuming the dark colored portion is the root or is it just dark because it’s wet?
If the dark section is all that remains of the roots it could be in for a mighty struggle.