I grew Peterson at my old place, I think Mango and Sunflower here. I’d say get whatever is most vigorous and healthy grower, then graft to what you want when its well established.
After many years my Sunflower seemed to turn a corner and start to look like its doing something including 9 fruit on the tree now. The Mango never looks happy for much of the season each year.
Fortunately my Sunflower has a couple of root suckers that look like they are growing pretty well. Hopefully their blooms will overlap.
Got in contact with him on FB. One of his primary concerns is CA ag inspection. Personally, while CA ag is tough, pawpaws aren’t a comercial product here, so I’d think they aren’t a major concern. He says no so far, but I’m still hoping.
It worked very well at separating the pulp from the seeds and turning the pulp into a goop I could easily put in containers and freeze. It scratched some seeds, and maybe left a few tiny bits of them behind, which I’m not sure is great (would I use this for something where you needed to be extra careful for e.g. distilling? Not sure). I still had to use a metal strainer to clean the individual seeds. Since I’m mostly interested in seeds for planting, I just hope it didn’t damage them too much.
The effort to pulp/seed ratio was not great at 2 pawpaws per cultivar, which is what I had. If I had had more pawpaws, and not been trying to save almost every seed, then it would have saved a lot of time.
I also got to try to try some new ones:
Yuri and Green River Belle were nice surprises! A bit seedy than the Peterson varieties, but more “fruity,” without the strong banana or floral flavors of e.g. Potomac. Not quite the tartness I’m still searching for, but closer to a refreshing fruity flavor. I wish I’d had more.
Atwood — wow, what a complex flavor profile. I felt like the one bite I had hit me with two to three waves of distinct favors, starting with banana, rolling through something hard to describe, and then finishing with strong caramel. Both my partner and I had the same experience, making several confused faces along the way. Not unpleasant, just very surprising.
Prima — Tim said it had no flavor. I tasted and I was like wow, almost no flavor. I gave a spoon to my partner and she was like “tastes like nothing.” Sort of remarkable, especially following the Atwood.
I got Atwood and NC-1 at the PA Pawpaw Fest this year. NC-1 kind of sucked (and the ones I got were small), but Atwood was really good. Banana-y and caramel like you say.
Saved seeds from all of them, going to start some in the four tree pots I’ve got. I gave my brother’s family an Allegheny seedling from last year. So it could use a friend.
The trees I planted three or four years ago finally have buds, so hopefully I’ll have a bunch of fruit this time next year.
so you just sucked some of the seeds from 1 fruit for a few seconds and got ill?
So you ate the pulp separately, then just cleaned the seeds of any remaining pulp around it by sucking on it?
I did have unusual gas/stomach issues when i ate a few pawpaws at my friends place. But the rest of his pawpaws were fine when i ate a couple days later.
Just curious as i did see Annonacins compounds (esp with cooking pawpaws) come up on FB groups again today.
write ups like these are so helpful, are there more articles or posts on different pawpaw varieties flavor notes. I’m interested in ones that are less banana-y lol
Was anyone able to sample the 3 freestone series of pawpaws like Marshmallow, Cantaloupe, Honeydew? I think i read they were from the same property/patch so curious how much difference in flavor people detect between them and if they really taste respectively as named (well i guess Marshmallow is more " tropical melon-like, sweetest of the 3" and named Marshmallow because of its ‘chiffon texture’, wonder if it tastes like the other 2).
I got to taste my first Honeydew fruit from my tree this year. I’ve been wanting to talk about this one, so this is a good opportunity. There was only small 1 fruit (I grafted it in 2021) that developed on the tree, so take anything I say here with a grain of salt.
I will sometimes smell pawpaws on the tree as they are getting close to ripe, so I know when to pick them. Most smell pretty similar. Honeydew had a more unique smell and there was a distinct component of that smell that actually reminded me of the scent of a ripening honeydew melon. That made me really excited when I smelled it lol.
I let it ripen on the counter for a couple days, though I let it ripen a bit too long for my taste preferences. Photos included of the top and bottom of the fruit. The bottom was scabby due to rubbing against the branch below it on windy days. I noticed some membrane/seed sack around some of the seeds, but it was very thin, easily broken, not fully developed, and I didn’t notice it at all when eating the pulp. So it may not be technically 100% freestone, but I would still consider it freestone anyway. The seeds took up 10% of the fruit (by weight), though it was only 82 grams in total weight. Seeds are on the larger side.
It was a rather unique tasting pawpaw. Melon and caramel flavors and a musky/funkiness that I haven’t tasted in pawpaws before. Moderate sweetness. Not much, if any, noticeable bitterness. Somewhat firm and a bit gelatinous in texture. Had a lingering, muskmelon-like aftertaste. I wish I ate it a bit sooner when it was mostly green, as I don’t like the caramel taste that develops when pawpaws develop brown skin coloration. I wonder if it would’ve tasted more distinctly melon-like if eaten earlier. Still, it was the most melon-like pawpaw that I’ve tasted, which is nice since I rarely taste pawpaws with melon as the predominant flavor. I’m not sure if the melon taste was that similar to honeydew, but it was close. It was at least some sort of muskmelon flavor. I’d need to taste more to figure that out more precisely.
Ultimately, the fruit left a good impression on me and I’m anxious to taste more of it in the future. It seems like a healthy tree and may be precocious since I didn’t expect it to fruit this year based on its size.
Thanks! Its been a plant and forget tree, although I had shade cloth on its south side until the hurricane blew its cage down. Its still growing strong even after being expose to high winds, and even has pushed out new growth this month. My parvifloras are also growing good. My triloba is not, has been a twig for about a month and a half now. I’ll know if its dead if it doesn’t wake up in March. It did this last year (albeit a little bit later) and then woke up in spring, so hopefully it does it again.
What’s the most space-effective way to start pawpaw seeds in a cool basement over winter? I was going to do tall paper cups in muffin trays on warming mats (just to see what the germination rate is), but with hundreds of cultivar seeds…
Just saying what worked for me.
After the seeds are stratified, i just put 100 seeds in light/thin plastic container (like something you get grapes in at the grocery store, thin material so the minimal heat from mat affects it more) filled with ProMixB soil over a warming mat under with lights on top and they all mostly sprouted.
Lights prob not needed until later, maybe i didn’t put lights until 1month later.
I think I kept the bin enclosed to keep some humidity in there so it doesn’t dry out.
Can see through the plastic at the bottom so can see if roots are forming (i may dig those out and move to a larger deeper pot next to it last year). Can prob use a regular 72 cell tray as well with humidity dome (just can’t see the roots forming).
My basement is not very cold though, its maybe 10F cooler than rest of the house, and put in hot water heater room so its actually warmer in there than rest of basement.
Gotcha. Mine is cool (normally 50F). What I’m nervous about is having them sprout and then not having a place to put them before the taproot becomes too large. Did you just shake it around? wait until they hit clear plastic bottom? I thought roots didn’t like light?
One of those overhead purple/pink UV light don’t seem to cause a problem with the roots at the bottom of the bin. yes i would wait until i would see roots at the bottom (i had many seeds in that bin so i would check from the bottom weekly vs ‘dig and check’ from the top). The roots hitting the bottom would grow sideways in the plastic bin until i quickly moved them to a larger/deeper pot. i forget when exactly… If I started February pretend indoors, I got good starts on some seeds by spring time … But some didn’t start at all indoors, but when i dumped the rest of the seeds outside in a large pot (pretend in April/May) then most of the rest came out.
Note: in addition to that plastic bin that had 100 seeds, I also had small 5" pots with 1-3 seeds in each (these were specific ones like VE-21 or Jerrys Big Girl seeds I got from Cliff that i wanted separate than my 100+ plastic-bin bundle of seeds).
