I’m not a pawpaw guru by any means, but flavor is going to vary by region they grow, and by what is in the ground where they are growing. Look particularly to whether or not you consistently have an appropriate growing season for the ones you want in your area.
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Are you interested at all in the ripening times? When I plant fruit, I like to plant for flavor and ripening times (I have other markers too). It’s the difference between harvesting for 1 month or 5 months (thinking of strawberries here).
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Good point, but no, it is not a priority. I am in zone 8, so apart from Maria’s Joy, I avoided buying “early ripening” trees.
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Mr Zinhead, you are THE BEST!!! Thank you so much for your help. For some reason a lot of nurseries described them all as “delicious”. Your response is very helpful and appreciated.
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Zinhead,
Have you tried any of the ones you recommended yourself?
Taste is subjective.
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KSU Chappell is far from bland here- a fabulous rich, bold taste, second best pawpaw I’ve ever tasted. And Maria’s joy is far from “intense” as grown here- it’s blah, meh, nobody home.
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No offense, going off the options of Blake that it’s an ultra sweet low acidity aromatic mild flavored pawpaw with Stellar delicate flavors & aromas.
I classify that as bland because I prefer pungent.
Soil & environment probably play big roles in flavor profile.
My apologies!
I modified the post.
I don’t find Wabash to be intense or complex in terms of flavor. It’s pretty mild tasting to me. It is very sweet though, to the point that that’s predominately what I taste from it. Can taste quite caramel-like the more it ripens, but they turn brown really fast and have more of a burnt sugar taste then. Texture is pretty firm with a very slight grittiness.
I don’t like how fast they ripen. If picked when they are just getting soft, they will start turning brown after ~1 week in the fridge, compared to several weeks for the other varieties I have. If left to ripen more on the tree, then they can turn brown in less than a day after falling off during warm weather. I thought a firmer fruited variety would keep better, but that clearly hasn’t been the case in my experiences with this variety over the last 2 years.
For a while I thought maybe I was picking them too late since I wasn’t used to feeling for ripeness of a firmer pawpaw. So I tried picking them earlier, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference. They just seem to go from underripe to overripe very quickly.
Honestly, not a variety that I care for much. I’m not a fan of caramel-like flavors though, and I don’t like fruit that is overly sweet without enough flavor or acidity to balance it out. However, I can see why some people might really like Wabash, especially those with a sweet tooth and prefer a firmer texture. I think most people would find them quite good when optimally ripe, but it’s difficult to get them like that (at least in my experiences thus far).
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@TJ_westPA
Lot’s of different soils & environments.
Your experience is very different from my friends, who described the fruit to me.
Hum, do you also have disease problems like fungi on Wabash fruit?
If so do you use copper spray on Wabash?
Environmental differences certainly could explain some disparities in fruit quality.
Nope, no disease or fungal issues. The tree is quite healthy looking and the closest wild pawpaw patches that I’ve found in my general area are about 12 miles away as the crow flies, so little chance of picking something up from wild pawpaw trees. No I don’t spray them with anything.
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For some fruits, early ripening is associated with a lower quality fruit (generally speaking, early apples aren’t “the best apples”).
I’m not sure how much this plays into pawpaws but from what I have researched, it appears early just means a different variety, not necessarily a lesser quality fruit. Having early and late options may be preferable for anyone wishing to have fresh pawpaw from late August through October in some cases.
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Thanks for the insight.
I guess I should be more specific when saying that Wabash is mild tasting to me. I think that the typical fruity pawpaw flavors (banana, melon, bubblegum, pineapple, mango) in Wabash are mild. But, the more sugary flavors (caramel, toffee, etc) are quite rich in Wabash. So I wouldn’t really disagree with anyone saying they are rich. I just think that they are not complex flavor-wise due to the sugary flavors dominating the milder fruit flavors. But that is just how my palette is. Fruit can easily taste cloying to me if the brix is high but the amount of flavor and/or acidity isn’t high enough to balance that out. I much prefer a McIntosh apple to a Fuji, for example, since Fujis taste overwhelmingly sweet to me and I can’t taste much besides the sugars.
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@ZinHead
I posted my thoughts on some of those varieties the first time I tried them several years ago, further up in this thread here: Pawpaw Varieties - #183 by TJ_westPA
I’ve tasted many more Shenandoah and Allegheny (and Wabash) from my own trees since then. I still feel pretty much the same about them.
Shenandoah is a great variety imo, even if it is very mild. Taste is typically like a slighly fruity vanialla pudding. Can sometimes have a bit of a coconut taste to them. Productive tree, large fruits, great flesh to seed ratio, precocious, easy to eat, keeps well. Lower sweetness, but still sweet enough for my tastes. They do tend to have a mild bitterness to them when they turn brown and get overripe, but they keep well in the fridge so this isn’t usually an issue for me.
Allegheny can be fantastic flavor-wise. They have a lot of complexity to them with a well-balanced mix of many different flavors. I swear I had 1 this year that had a bit of flavor to it that reminded me of orange sherbet. I did taste a bit of pineapple in that one, which likely contributed to the perception of a sherbet taste. Good level of sweetness. They keep really well in the fridge and don’t develop much or any bitter flavors, even when overripe. The drawbacks to Allegheny are the seediness, smaller size, and need for aggressive thinning to keep fruits better sized.
Mango… I’m not too sure about yet. My tree fruited for the first time this year and only gave 5 or 6 fruits. They have had a more pronounced banana flavor to them and can have a noticeable bitterness to them (especially near the seeds). Sweetness is at a good level, similar to Allegheny (not as high as Wabash or as low as Shenandoah). They seem to keep well enough in the fridge. I really can’t say anything conclusive about Mangos fruits yet. A couple fruits didn’t seem to ripen properly, a few were pretty seedy, and I had a low sample size. The tree is a good grower, but has been reluctant to develop flowers & fruit thus far. Hopefully next year I will get more fruits from it, with more consistency in quality.
I haven’t tasted the others you mentioned, ZinHead. I do have Maria’s Joy and many others varieties grafted on my younger trees though, so I hope to taste and describe those in the future.
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A word of caution on your project, set up irrigation prior to planting for your trees to be established…
"The exception was a fifty-three-acre farm he cashed out his retirement savings and everything else to buy in 2000 in Pendleton County, West Virginia. In May of that year, he hired high school students to help him plant 3,000 grafted pawpaw trees. The night of May 5 it rained, which he took as a harbinger of a good harvest. It didn’t rain again until mid-August, the worst drought since 1930. He lost 2,950 trees, and the 50 that survived were too stressed to make it through the winter. “It was pawpaws or bust,” he tells me over lunch at the Mountain View Diner in Charles Town. “And I went bust.” He seems detached from the disaster, as if it were just a temporary setback. Which, in the long trajectory of his life as a plant breeder, it was. "
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How exciting!!! Keep us posted on your project.
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Irrigation may equal much faster fruiting, but has not been required to keep plants alive once established, just as I recently shipped a plant that had not been tended for a couple decades and under 3 feet tall. In a container in the shade…no supplemental ‘rain’ given beyond it’s first year.
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@BlueBerry yeah here in Ky i would agree but he plans to grow these in the desert.
I really doubt they can survive without rain or irrigation long term. I cant think of a more challenging fruit tree to grow in such a place. The heat, lack of rain, low humidity and im assuming the UV is more intense there. Its definitely going to be a challenge to say the least.
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I had posted earlier inquiring about fungus-resistant paw paw varieties, and followed up by emailing Cliff England and Sheri Crabtree asking their thoughts on the most fungus-resistant varieties.
Cliff replied, “Two of the Most disease resistant cultivars that I know of is Kentucky Champion and Halvin. Most have excellent fruit and the leaves are clean thru till fall.”
Sheri replied, “Of our cultivars, Atwood and Benson are both fairly resistant to fungal disease. Chappell is a little more susceptible, so if you have a lot of issues with fungal disease I would go with Atwood or Benson. Susquehanna is also pretty disease resistant in our orchards, and from my observations Tallahatchie is also more resistant, but Sunflower, Wabash, and Potomac are more susceptible.”
So, between those two sources, some fungal-disease-resistant varieties include:
- Kentucky Champion
- Halvin
- Atwood
- Benson
- Susquehanna
- Tallahatchie
Does anyone who grows one or more of these resistant varieties have any preferences for which they think are “better”? I am having a hard time choosing what to topwork onto my existing tree in a shady, fungus-prone location. (Although I already have an Atwood, so that one is not in the running, for me).
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First, he’ll have to learn the seeds likely don’t sprout in sun…and they’ll die the first summer in sun. But an older plant, especially on a north or NE facing slope, should be able to handle the climate. But, I agree…40 plus inches of annual rainfall here plus shade is the main reason I have some plants 10 and more years old despite neglect.
This applies to many species, not just asimina triloba.
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IXL, NC-1, GB are not mild imo. And Shenandoah is the vanilla ice cream of pawpaws (sans Al’s White since it’s less common).
Whoever is telling you that NC-1 is mild… I need to have a word with them.
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