Don’t know yet on Susq.
This year could be a fluke but yeah I guess if there really are later varieties (I’m a little skeptical of the true seasonal differences) then maybe I could make it to mid September.
1 Like
I still have Potomac, Sunflower, and Shenandoah dropping. What was your latest dropping this year for you?
wow!
Mine was August 29th. It was very unexpected for me to have such an early and short season.
However, this was the first crop I’ve ever had, so the trees are just getting started. Perhaps as they mature the seasonailty will change. It may have something to do with my irrigation (well, lack thereof)…i did learn that I need to water more in July to ensure good size and texture, at least in parts of the orchard where it seems drier (uphill).
1 Like
They will even out as they mature. It’s the fact they are young they get stressed easier. Any stressing causes them to drop fruit early and small, just like any other fruit.
3 Likes
@JustPeachy I have some thoughts and questions on shipping pawpaws. Having eaten all of five pawpaws in my life, and shipped precisely zero,these are definitely just theory at this point.
First of all, I’m curious as to how you package them for shipping? Do you individually wrap the fruits, or do you go more for simply immobilizing? I feel like something like an egg crate, or the trays that they put pears in combined with those styrofoam “socks” would be ideal. It also occurred to me that you could probably use a wine case to good effect. Put crumpled up paper at the bottom of each division, then stack the fruits (with more paper in between). It would provide cushioning and immobilization.
Lastly, have you (or has anyone else) experimented with throwing an ethylene absorber in the box? I’ve been wondering whether that would be enough to slow down the ripening process well enough to keep them firm in transit.
1 Like
[I apologize for the long post in advance.] I tried it all this year. Styrofoam socks. Bubble wrap. Individual wrapping. Segregated tray like what they use for peaches. Styrofoam netting sleeves like they use for asian pears.
A lot of my experiments shipping this year were based on pictures and posts I saw on this forum about people receiving pawpaws from online orders.
I think the best is still crumbled newspaper layering + individual wrapped each one with newspaper + lose lasagna layering. This is to maximize the number of pawpaw you can ship at one time and minimize any damage that might occur during shipping. I can ship roughly ~5 pounds in probably ~12x10x8 box this way (I don’t remember the exact dimensions of the boxes I used).
I have tried ethylene absorber. It doesn’t matter much. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. It doesn’t matter much in such a enclosed space where all of them are individually packed because they end up being each in their own localized contained in a sense. Newspaper is permeable and the cracks and space in the crumpled newspaper do let gas exchange happen. It doesn’t help much is what I mean. The two times I tried.
If you were to pack each individually with less permeable material (styrofoam sleeve or bubblewrap) and use one ethylene absorber per pawpaw that might work. The down side with this is that you’re using a lot of ethylene absorbers and it’s just another cost.
Ethylene isn’t the only issue. We’re still talking about pawpaw shipping between basically August through October. Even here, where I am, where we get fall before almost everyone else growing pawpaws, it’s can be still warm till Halloween. If it’s warm outside, it’s warm inside, where the package is getting processed and in the shipping van. I could send it refrigerated shipping, but that’s insanely expensive even choosing the slow service.
To completely remove ethylene and heat as issues (without refrigerated shipping), you could use a styrofoam cooler box, pack with ice packs, individually wrap each pawpaw and include ethylene absorbers in each wrapped pawpaw. You could probably get away with 2 or maybe even 3 day shipping this way. That’s about 60% of the cost of overnight shipping. The problem is that now the packing material is substantially increased due to the styrofoam and I’m shipping you 2 pounds of pawpaw instead of 5. Or I’ve needed to use a larger box, meaning more expensive cost. So you’re end up getting maybe 20-30% of shipping savings for 50% less pawpaw.
In the end, there is no substitute for time. Overnight shipping is the way to go. I will couch this with you can pick hardened pawpaw and time it right for slower shipping, but you’re rolling the dice on counter-ripening unless you are really experienced at picking pawpaws (which I am not). Plus, there is still no substitute for a tree ripened pawpaw. It’s like any other fruit in that respect. You’re not really evaluating the “correct flavor profile.”
There is another caveat for this. It has to be overnight shipping THAT night it was picked. With a late drop off at 8-9PM at the shipping hub, the pawpaw needs only to travel 10-16 hours in a box max. With tree ripe pawpaw, you’re gambling too much with waiting a day or two. An enclosed space, shipping on warm days, you need to get it from point A to point B as fast as possible. I’d probably put a few holes in the box for aeration actually. That is another way to go instead of adding the cost of ethylene absorbers. The people on the back half of my shipping experiments benefited more from the experience of the first half. They typically arrived if not all green but still mostly green and still firm.
If anyone wants pawpaws next year from me, I would suggest contacting me in June and July. I will just make it a standing order. It has to be that way to do it as tree ripened pawpaw. We are thinning next year so they will be larger.
Posts (mostly bad experiences on shipping):
Red Ferm Farm - smashed fruit and blacked, this was ground shipping from what I can tell from shipping cost ($15 bucks shipping up to 15 pounds sounds like priority mail flat rate), they no longer sell fruit via mail
Integration Acres - Look at that big aerated shipping box and how many pawpaw got through Use of bubblewrap in shipment the year prior.
Earthly - individually packed, somewhat segregated shipping These are from Deep Run pawpaw orchard in Maryland. Jim Davis is an expert in picking them early to handle better before they are tree-ripe. Even so, I don’t think that reflects a true taste, maybe 80-90% of it. I don’t know if that is why @Vincent_8B Susquehanna looks pale. variable experience from @murky
7 Likes
Wow! I figured you’d been thorough, but I am impressed with just how thorough you’ve been. That’s all very good info for anyone wanting to ship or receive pawpaws. That’s disappointing that the ethylene absorbers don’t seem to help much, but I suppose if the silver bullet was that obvious, we’d all be getting mail-order pawpaws by now!
And, totally unrelated, the latest episode of The Sporkful happens to highlight pawpaws:
2 Likes
It’s too late for this season but Rocky Point Farm in Rhode Island sells pawpaws. There are new owners and I don’t like the packages they put together compared to the old owners, but it’s an option.
I just had my last Sunflower pawpaw last night. A neighbor of mine has a friend who grows pawpaws. Theirs are tiny and some of them have a bitter aftertaste. Compared to the random pawpaws my Sunflower and Shenandoah are HUGE and much more flavorful.
1 Like
I have pictures up of most of the pawpaws that come from here. The really small ones are unthinned, but we have some big ones just under a pound each that were also unthinned. @ramv got a few of those. I thin my own tree so those get pretty big.
Mine are just starting to come in and I of course didn’t thin them at all. The Sunflower in particular is said to be quite large, and mine were. I have Sunflower, KSU-Atwood, and Shenandoah. Hopefully I get too much to handle next year.
3 Likes
Susquehanna I sent @ramv were decent size. ~3/4 to 1 a pound each. They get even larger when you thin. Also, it’s cultivar dependent. Unless you have 10 varieties planted out won’t really see much of a difference.
I didn’t see it until I was able to see them side by side here at Neal’s friend’s orchard. Sunflower, Atwood, and Shenandoah don’t have a tendency to overcrop (at least not here). There are cultivars that do. Allegheny is one. Wells is another. Rebecca’s Gold seems to do it. If you visit a wild pawpaw patch, you’ll notice small fruit on a lot or at least a few of the trees. Those are usually from overcropping.
In very large plantings, I think there may be a bigger need to thin, if every single flower gets set. Or perhaps choose cultivars with less overcropping tendency.
1 Like
I haven’t shipped any pawpaws yet, but I have a few thoughts on box engineering.
Thinking about how Hello Fresh ships their meals, they use 2 big freezer packs to keep the meat from spoiling, and they likely do a 2 day shipping to keep costs reasonable. If the big companies focused on fresh food are doing it this way, I’d say they’ve run the numbers to make it as economical as possible. I think that a substantial amount of freezer packs would be a less expensive substitute for faster shipping, no?
Additionally, I’m not super familiar with box sizes, but a large flat rate USPS box is still pretty affordable the last time I checked. Had you ever considered that route, finding a slightly smaller box to place inside it, and then using spray foam insulation (great stuff is the brand I know of from home improvement stores, there are slightly less expensive off brands) and plopping the smaller box inside the bigger one, effectively making an airtight cooler? Instead of an internal box, you could even use a bag, place your pawpaws suspended from the bottom with newspapers etc, and then spray foam it all closed so they are super secured as well as insulated.
Like I said, just “thinking out loud” to help make a better method for everyone to benefit.
The priority mail boxes have a lack of rigidity because they are thinner than the average cardboard box. When you have a chance, look at an Amazon box vs a USPS flat rate one. No matter what service you use, no one is going to be particularly gentle with your package. Cliff has mentioned that he stopped labeling fragile on his pawpaw boxes to friends cause it seems they always arrive with more damage not less.
As you know, pawpaws get easily bruised, more so if shipped, since the box has to go through conveyer belts and deal with handlers throwing packages onto the back of shipping vans. Most of the produce that comes from HelloFresh don’t bruise easily. If you don’t use an internal box, spray foam is still a bad idea since it hardens. The pawpaws need material that has give. Anything solid is a bad idea. Also, the longer the duration of shipping the more insulation you need obviously to prevent heat transfer. At the same time, the more insulation you have, the more ethylene build up you have to compete with once the entropy increases (cold packs no longer cold).
HelloFresh is a poor example to look at (imo). Almost anything that HelloFresh ships I basically can drop on the floor or throw against a wall and comeback a day later and still use. You can’t do that with a tree ripe pawpaw. Also how cold is the cold pack when it arrives? Not very cold. That’s part of the problem. You may help the pawpaw’s condition for the first 18-20 hours, but you also create conditions to accelerate ripening after the cold pack is no longer cold.
Location also matters [for cost], I’m almost at the transit hub conveniently to ship things to either coast for the same cost. HelloFresh has more than one distribution center to make transit shorter (and cheaper). I can ship to Washington at the same cost as I can to Virginia (roughly speaking). Other’s don’t necessarily have this benefit. Someone else in North Carolina, for example, may find they have no choice but to pack less pawpaws with more freezer packs to mail to someone in Oregon because their overnight shipping costs would be 30-40% more than mine.
I do agree that there may be other people wherein it makes more sense to try with more insulation due to their location dictating higher shipping costs. That’s not the case for me specifically. It simply makes more sense to pack more pawpaws in and go with a faster shipping method. I’m not shipping to a cliente though and I pass on actual shipping cost to everyone on this forum that asks because I’m not operating a business. Integration Acres, Earthly, and others have to pay wages so there’s not just the shipping fee, handling costs and the cost of the actual pawpaws.
Though, I would point out, newspaper is free (for me at least), cold packs, foam spray, cooler box, ethylene absorbers are not. There’s going to be a break even point where overnight is cheaper. Too many variables for me to worry about extending shipping time. I’m not in a business so its just easier to require overnight shipping.
If there’s one major fault, I tend to completely overthink things and get into tons of minutia. (This post is a good example.)
Ask @Barkslip next time how I nearly drove him insane with all my hot pipe callus questions. “Just graft the damn thing. Stop thinking so much” or something along those lines, I think was one of his messages. 
My emails with @scottfsmith, @SMC_zone6, and Andy Mariani about peaches get pretty nitty gritty (sometimes about genetics) too because I have very specific targets for peaches that I grow.
5 Likes
You were driving me crazy. I’ll admit it.
Dax
6 Likes
I’m sorry. 
4 Likes
I guess my reference for Hello Fresh is more geared towards the fact that when we’ve received an order to try the service, the ice pack is usually still frozen. As you said this may be due to a regional shipping facility, but where I was going with that is ice is cheap, shipping is expensive. Maybe I’m overestimating how long it will work, but I know my insulated growler can keep ice cold for up to 3 days. So I guess I’m getting at if there’s a will (and a market), there has to be a way. This is a smart group of people, I bet we can figure it out even if it takes a few iterations. The caveat being a shipping service that actually delivers when they say they will.
3 Likes
The incentive for overnight shipping is that they have to refund shipping cost if they don’t make it in time. There is no incentive for UPS or Fedex to make estimate ground shipping delivery date (it’s not a guaranteed service). USPS also has no incentive other than refunding shipping cost if they lose package. Priority mail is not a guaranteed service. No penalties.
Insulated anything means enclosed space. I’m still not keen on that, because you can have cold damage with pawpaws. It’s like they become bletted (this is ignoring ethylene issue with enclosed spaces, that is another discussion). You need a chilled but not cold enclosure (~40 degrees). Using ice packs you’d need a way to diffuse regular cold temp, but still have it last long enough. It’s too much build and additional cost for me to worry about. This may help for those with economy of scale shipping from a farm to a processing center. It won’t help anyone shipping on small scale in 5 pound boxes (at least in my case… maybe someone else can figure it out if they get these materials cheap or free).
3 Likes
So I’ll ask the hard questions then-
Is it better to pick the pawpaw before completely tree ripe to have an extended shelf life with poorer flavor development, or to have a mushy overripe pawpaw shipped? It seems like many have already tried and failed to ship the “perfect pawpaw”. Maybe this is the limitation of the currently existing cultivars and someone needs to breed for exceedingly thick skin so that they can be shipped easily. Taste is a good thing but if the good taste goes away because it isn’t protected for shipping, it is a moot point.
Should we just accept that the best use case for pawpaws is in beer, because they have a tendency to ferment on their own? Mind you this is perfectly fine with me if it brings the fruit to the forefront of public knowledge but certainly a niche market.
This isn’t me giving up, just being open to the possibility that pawpaws may remain a backyard fruit (and that is OK)
3 Likes
That’s a good question, and I completely acknowledge I do not have the answer. >_< I’m just telling you the results of my experiments with shipping 20 something pawpaw packages.
I can only tell you what works for me. Those that I have shipped overnight to [and in situations where I shipped the same day they were harvested and did late shipping hub drop off] did receive tree-ripe pawpaws that were 95% green and firm. (This is assuming they opened box immediately instead of letting it sit on doorstep for a day and got to it later because they were too busy. Someone did that. Not a good idea. Pawpaws have their own schedule. They wait on no one.)
I can meet those three conditions quite easily so that is what I go with. Less time packing, less wasted packing material (better for the environment), and less fuss (minus the hassle of running to the shipping hub instead of the local Fedex/UPS store).
2 Likes
Are there any cultivars that have a true custard/ creme brûlée flavor? I found this wild pawpaw last season that really surprised me. Rich vanilla custard flavor. Really no pawpaw or other fruit flavor. I’ve had other white pawpaws that were really good but this one didn’t taste like a pawpaw. It was 200g and low seed around 6%. I know the general location it came from but I don’t think it had any fruit this year. Hopefully next season I can locate it again. Would this be something different in the pawpaw orchard?
17 Likes