Im new to pawpaws, but i would like to try growing them here in Colorado. I have a farmerv friend who has successfully grown mature pawpaw trees here.
What varieties are the earliest for ripe fruit?
These are the ones mentioned in one of the pawpaw books:
Halvin
Kentucky Champion
NC-1
Zimmerman
Summer Delight
KSU 27
VE-5
VE-21 ?
Fairchild
Ketter
Quaker Delight
Golden Moon
Early Surprise
Belle
Are there any others that are highly recommended for early fruit / northern climates? Are any of these easy to find? NC-1 i think is from Canada. Any others from Canada or the extreme northern areas? Any of these have no bitter aftertaste or low acetogenins?
Halvin
Kentucky Champion
Summer Delight
VE-21
Those are the ones that I know of,to put in the early ripening group.Some of the others may be,but more people can comment about them.
I know it wasn’t your question but …
Fairchild and Ketter are extinct.
Zimmerman too as far as I know.
I’m not an expert on seasonality of cultivars, but some of the Davis cultivars were selected from the wild in Michigan, so they might be early: Davis, Taylor, Taytoo, Prolific, Tollgate, Lynn’s Favorite.
However these are older varieties and have mostly been eclipsed by newer ones.
My notes from discussions:
Early: Summer Delight (England’s Orchard KY), Allegheny, Shenandoah, Halvin, Kentucky Champion, NC-1, KSU Benson.
All available except possibly Halvin
RLG4 is a new release I’ll be trialing for early fruit.
Mrs. Frank Ketter’s national contest winning fruit and the Fair children derived from it extinct? Tell me it isn’t so Mr. Triloba Tracker!
Taytoo eclipsed? In my opinion it shines on! 
Thanks all, i think I’ll need to keep researching all these to try and narrow down which ones i want to try and grow.
Im a little confused on ‘Taylor’ though. A few sources online say this is a Canadian variety, but a few other sources (including KSU) say this is a Michigan variety selected from the wild in Eaton Rapids, MI, by Corwin Davis in 1968.
Is this a case of carefully crafted wording so someone can sell SEEDLINGS descended from Taylor that have grown in Canada at high prices, or another variety named Taylor?
Has anyone grown Taylor and Taytwo? Are these early ripening varieties? Any good?
So I did a spreadsheet with all the categories and info that was relevant to me. Trying to narrow down the best varieties to four. The most important category being early fruit bearing, but balanced with other traits such as fairly large fruit, etc. Then I color coded each section and gave those colors a point system.
The four that came out on top for what I am looking for are:
SAA Zimmerman
Halvin
Kentucky Champion
‘Maria’s Joy’ (‘166-13’)
Surprisingly SAA Zimmerman came out on top and Halvin not far behind. If anyone knows of good sources for these four varieties, please let me know.
The others on my short list that got beat out were:
Summer Delight
Shenandaoh
‘Quaker Delight’
Naomi’s Delicious
‘Golden Moon’
I believe Cricket Hill Garden has SAA Zimm, Shenandoah, and Quaker Delight.
Here Maria’s Joy is a disappointment for taste. Meh, nobody home. Might be different for you. And I don’t recall Halvin being rated very high in the taste department, seems to have faded into obscurity. I’d replace one or both of those with Shenandoah.
I think pawpaw had a phase where a lot of people were just finding decent wilds and slapping a name on it.
What’s your typical growing season there? Like last and first freezes? I assume it can be highly variable.
I’m in z5b, but I tend to avoid the last and first freezes that the valley beneath me gets so I can usually squeak out another week for ripening into October.
The varieties I was looking at for early ripening were Halvin, VE-21, Allegheny, Nyomi’s Delicious, and Summer Delight. PA Golden is early too, but most say the flavor is hit or miss.
Chappell is a very vigorous grower for me and it may be worth growing for when you get longer growing seasons.
I would probably look into getting seed from Cliff England from his VE-21 crosses with 250-39 (Jerry’s Big Girl) and 275-48 (Lehman’s Delight). You should get some seedlings with large size and early ripening. Those that are inferior you can just graft over.
I have many pawpaws that are on their third or fourth leaf (8A Georgia). Most were from One Green World and were tiny when I got them (whips about half as thick as a pencil). Growth has been pretty slow for all of them so far, and I had my first casualties this spring when a Wabash and one of my Shenandoahs failed to wake up from dormancy. None have fruited so far, but I had a lot of flowers this year, most of which got tagged by a late frost.
Among my pawpaws, the Shenandoahs are notable for slow growth. Maria’s Joy appears more vigorous.
“Allegheny”, a vigorous, short season Peterson variety. Most people love the beautiful flavor of this one.
Thanks everyone,
I’m in Northern Colorado. I’m in zone 5b. Cold hardiness and earliness are important to me, but for my climate the most challenging conditions for pawpaw will be late freezes for blossoms, extra bright sunlight because of our elevation, and dry desiccating winds in the winter combined with a semi-arid climate. I know a farmer friend who has grown mature pawpaw trees here before, so it can be done, but these are the biggest challenges. Late flowering varieties might be useful here.
Also I have noticed that in general we have a high die rate for the tops of grafted trees where only the rootstocks survive. This is probably related to our dry winter climate. Two possible solutions for that: 1. paint the trunks with white latex paint. 2. air layer until the top roots and either cut off the rootstock or bury it above the graft joint.
I redid my spreadsheet and point system again with as much information I could find and kept updating it when I found more accurate information. I did my best to balance things like fruit size, fruit quality rating, low seed ratio, low acetogenins, etc.
My top 4 varieties this time came out as:
Wabash
‘Nyomi’s Delicious’
‘KSU Chappell’ (‘KSU 4-1’)
and Halvin
- and ‘Pennsylvania Golden’
Wabash and KSU Chappell should have the lowest acetogenins. Halvin might be the earliest. ‘Nyomi’s Delicious’ is reported to have a color break when ripe. Of these, KSU Chappelle certainly has the most going for it, including extra high brix.
So I think these are the four I will be trying to grow moving forward. I can’t wait to grow some pawpaws!
EDIT: It looks like I forgot one piece of info for ‘Pennsylvania Golden’. It ended up also being in the top 5. So, it might not be a bad overall variety as well.
@Keen101
Goodluck on your pawpaw endeavors i just wanted to point out that the graft wont root via airlayer or burying the graft union. Also as far as late blooming pawpaws im not sure they have that much of a difference in bloom time to matter. All mine will start flowering within a week of one another except for a Sunflower variety that i have on the north side of my house. They flower for weeks at a time so there shouldnt be an issue with pollination or one variety avoiding frost better than another. One thing to keep in mind is pawpaws do have secondary flower buds that will emerge and bloom if the first set of flowers are lost to frost. If i were you id start some seedlings from improved varieties and plant them where you want the trees then graft them next year.
If i had to pick a handful of varieties to grow id go with Susquehanna, Shenandoah, Allegheny, KSU Benson, KSU Chappelle.
Has anyone actually tried growing Halvin Sidewinder? Is it really much earlier ripening versus other cultivars?
What is RLG4