Thanks for sending them.It opens up the chance to taste different flavors,with the view towards later grafting and planting.
I’m glad you were able to enjoy them! I too am trying new pawpaws in the hopes I may find something else that peaks my interest. New for me this year was Maria’s Joy, Taytoo, Rebecca’s Gold, and a handful of new crosses/seedlings.
Now that I’ve thought about it, I’m still not quite convinced that pawpaw flavor alone itself as diverse as apples. However, I think there’s enough diversity when you factor in texture and perhaps firmness that some people will find that they prefer cultivars that fit a certain “profile” over others.
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Anyone familiar with this seller:
Are the reputable? Is it likely that these seeds will be decent?
He lives ‘down the road’ from me, but I’ve yet to visit him.
My first impression is that he’s “OK”.
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Bear in mind, as you very well know, that we are only on 3rd to 4th generation cultivars versus wild stock based on what we are aware of using modern methods. Who knows how much selective breeding Native Americans were doing prior to European interference. They may have done a little bit of “this tree tasted good, I’ll plant the seeds”, or maybe they had methods to selectively cross as we have discovered improves chances of higher fruit quality. No way to know unfortunately.
That being said, we have literally thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of apple cultivars and hundreds of years working on cultivars. I’m confident that pawpaws will find their way to greatness, just as “club apples” now build on the success of the huge resources poured into modern apple breeding programs.
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I highly doubt we will ever reach “club pawpaw” type situation… I was listening to stories that a few PGA members were sharing about years past dealing and negotiating with large corporations. (I believe one was Ocean Spray… )
Pawpaws will always have limited interest for multitude of reasons, but the mainly is that it’s nearly impossible to ever produce enough for commercial interest and even if you did the requirements would be impractical.
This is how one PGA member explained it to me, and it makes sense now that I’ve had time to think about it. Say some company needs 10,000 pounds of pawpaw. You need to pulp it immediate after harvest and do it in phases because you can’t accumulate enough all at once (the harvest from the week before would be spoiled already). This would require a large scale farm with the willingness to invest in a planting that wouldn’t generate its first return for at least 6 years (compared to apples in 2-3). You’d need processing and storage on site, which you don’t necessarily require for other fruit.
Until you get commercial interest, it’s never going to be in stores. If it’s not in stores, there’s never going to be properly exposed to people and generate enough demand. Thus, it’s always going to be relegated to a backyard interest or niche local farm type situation.
(Putting aside the fact that pawpaws are a far far more polarizing fruit relative to apples, pears, stone fruit, etc… imo)
That’s just my take anyways. Who knows though… In 100 years, they might figure out a way to GMO a pawpaw that’s perfectly shelf stable for 2 weeks.
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I would say the challenges associated with pawpaws from a spoilage perspective are very real. However, that said, frozen fruit pulp/ice cream type dessert is already the closest thing we have to a commercial enterprise for pawpaw.
There are folks looking into pawpaws from a commercial lense. Tom Wahl at Red Fern Farm mentioned that he had one tree that appears to ripen all of its fruit in an extremely short time frame, a day or two. If that trait could be found for various ripening periods, those cultivars could make for a much more effective commercial harvesting system instead of a labor intensive “is it ripe” checkup on each fruit on a tree.
The parallels I am thinking about in my mind are very different industries, cranberries and dairy farms. With cranberries, you harvest the field all at once and send it off to make Ocean Spray juice for the year.
With dairy farms, you have a product that will spoil quickly if not processed with lots of infrastructure and a well tuned assembly line style program (for larger operations, of course).
If both of these strategies could be combined with the right investment, you could have a winning strategy in my opinion. Heck, even if someone built the right machine to remove skin economically and the lowest seed ratio, or Freestone cultivars were created, that might be a game changer too. I am almost envisioning a giant fine cheese grater type machine that you could put whole frozen fruits into, flash heat so the skin gets soft for easy removal, shred and remove the skin, wash, then send to seed removal, then some sort of process for that. It would be a huge undertaking but I’m sure it could be done. For example, imagine chocolate covered pawpaw freeze pops on the grocery store shelf. My wife buys Diana’s bananas, and those silly things aren’t even ripe bananas. Pawpaw would make a superior product both with better taste and lower carbon emissions being locally sourced.
Similarly to how a brewery grows, no one starts at Annheiser Busch size, they work up to it from a carboy fermenting in their downstairs shower, which by the way is a very easy way to clean up after an overly enthusiastic strain of yeast.
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Yeah but didn’t you also say that she doesn’t like ANY pawpaw. >_< When you have people dislike something, the lower emissions and locally sourced argument doesn’t work.
On a side note, pawpaws I notice also have a short freezer life than one might think. The taste changes too… (at least to me).
Several of the seedlings/crosses do that drop nearly everything type thing. Who knows if it is genetics or environment or both. Not sure if that is necessarily better from a cultivation standpoint though. Maybe for commercial, but this would run counter to what you’d want for a local crop, where you want harvest to be spread out since it spoils so fast.
You might be right though. I just don’t see it in the next 50 years. The money and interest still isn’t there. It’s a chicken and egg scenario. Without the fruit for people to taste, you can’t generate interest for enough finance. Without enough finance, you can’t generate enough fruit for people to taste. We probably need the equivalent of a Johnny Appleseed (Johnny Pawpaw?) seed to sow it in ever park and public space and gift saplings to every population center.
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Lots of good debate here but funny you mentioned pulp in the freezer.
I froze several cups back in August in ziplocs.
My wife made some pudding with some (stirred in after cooling), and it tasted strange. Then from a separate bag yesterday I made a smoothie. It also tasted a little funky, plus I got a bit sick (could’ve been old milk but probably not).
I tasted all the fruits as I processed them back in August and all tasted great and didn’t make me sick. But a couple months later I’m not impressed. Probably will throw the rest out.
After this I’m inclined to relegate Pawpaws to fresh eating only.
Or at minimum let them get overripe before processing, to get the caramel/maple goodness. The fruitiness of the less ripe Pawpaws seems to be the issue for me when freezing.
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I tried them both ways. Results weren’t good either way when freezing. I even go as far as to separate pawpaw pulp by cultivars (which helps some).
Even vacpacked, the frozen pulp doesn’t really seem to store long. I’m pretty sure it’s still aging in the freezing or whatever enzymatic activity continues that advances them to not so great flavor, just at a slower rate. Frozen Cherimoya puree last “up to 4 months” according to one book. Though, I don’t ever recall frozen Cherimoya pulp tasting this different from fresh.
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I am not sure there is hope for her, specifically, but you are absolutely right about other people too. However there are tons of people who don’t like tuna, or shrimp, or seafood in general and there is still a huge market for it. I do agree finding the right market is key.
That is a very important point to make, and I’m glad @TrilobaTracker chimed in too because I have little experience here as I just froze this years pulp. I’ll plan on using it soon. From this perspective though, I wonder if there is a process that can be developed to halt the ripening better. Milk has pasteurization to further process it to make it safer, maybe some amount of heat prior to freezing would “stabilize” pawpaw, or maybe a very deep freeze. Hard to say without some experiments.
I think that commercial and backyard “high quality” will end up being different metrics for pawpaws. As insect and disease pressure is lower, compared to many other commercial crops, you could select for many other desirable qualities (seedless, freestone, ripening window, fruit size etc) instead of coddling moth or blight resistance etc.
There are those amongst us already working towards that goal (looking at you @urbangardener @jaunders1) and funny enough my wife’s boss apparently calls me Johnny Pawpawseed already, so…
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It’s not just the storage life issue. Frozen pawpaws taste different (to me) from their flavor profile relative to fresh. I recommend everyone try it. Take all your favorite pawpaws cultivars and process them. You can try it with or without skin, with or without seeds. I’ve tried the variations. Separate by cultivar and freeze. Do it in storage bags, vacuum seal, etc… Come back one week later and try them. I had 12 different cultivars all marked and processed in different various different ways last year.
It’s not a time issue for me - whether it’s a few days later, a week, or a month. I can’t describe it well. The pawpaw flavor itself and the way the phenolic flavors interact. It’s not the same as it is fresh, and not necessarily in a good or neutral way.
Pawpaw ice cream seems ok, but that might be because pulp is pretty heavily diluted at that point.
I’m not sure pasteurization is the way to go. Pawpaws get pretty funky when exposed to low level heat. Deep freeze maybe.
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@tonyOmahaz5 freezes a lot of his Pawpaws.What’s your opinion Tony,is there a big taste difference,between fresh or frozen?
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Great review Tracker! I haven’t tried many of these but they sound fantastic!
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Not that I own a freeze dryer at this point, lol, but I wonder if you can put them in a freeze dryer.
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I had previously read in a few places that pawpaw pulp “freezes well” and has a long lifespan.
It’s definitely recommended in many sources.
I haven’t worked with it much prior to this year.
Integration Acres ships frozen pawpaw pulp year round as many may know.
So I’m just not sure what the deal is.
I have made amazing ice cream in the
past but I think I used fresh or shortly-refrigerated pulp, not frozen.
I need to thaw some pulp and just taste it by itself.
I think Tony has said the whole frozen fruits are just fine for his tastes, but would like to hear from him too.
Farm girl - the tales of great sickness from dehydrated pawpaw are too numerous for me to think freeze drying would be good.
However, if I had one, or just a dehydrator, I would almost have to try it for myself 
Lastly, Neal Peterson already has dibs on the name Johnny Pawpawseed LOL
Freeze drying is not the same as dehydrating though. They are different processes. Freeze drying is actually closer to freezing. With dehydrating you are using heat to remove water and only about 70 percent of the water. With freeze drying you are using cold to remove about 99% of the water.
So, I wonder what about dehydrating causes people to get sick when they eat the paw paw in that form. I’m assuming that it’s the concentrated alkaloids, but could it also be the heat processing (even if it’s low heat)? If a person were to dehydrate paw paw, but then add the estimated 70 percent of water back in through cold water soaking (for say, 24 hours, in the fridge) would the paw paw still make them sick? Also, if you freeze dry paw paw and then fully re-hydrate, would that make a person sick?
I have a couple excailber dehydrators, but I wouldn’t dare use what few paw paws I got on an experiment like that! 
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Great info and very good questions to which I don’t know the answers!
Freeze drying sounds quite intriguing to try with pawpaw. I don’t recall hearing mention of anyone like KSU or Ohio U trying it. Surely someone has….that would be a very useful way of preserving pawpaws.
A friend of my has a freeze dry a machine. He freeze-dried several fruit for me. It tasted like sweet cardboard or flavored styrofoam.
I will ask if he could freeze-dry pawpaw just to see what it will be like.
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You do know that you can re-hydrate freeze dried food, right? It won’t taste like Styrofoam then. 
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