Pawpaws in 2022

Hey pawpaw fans whats going on in your orchards this season? At our farm we will be seeing some Lehman varieties fruiting for the 1st time, as well as some of our Ultra Select seedlings planted 7 years ago from seed.

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Despite such a good bloom, Most trees have light fruit set.

My KSU, Al Horn an Lehman are still at least one season from bearing. (If I get them in the ground and out of pots, that’ll help.)

Other seedlings from Trafalgar Indiana, Middlesboro, Kentucky, Berea, Kentucky, and Red River Gorge area of Kentucky.

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I hand pollinated our trees this year pretty diligently and am seeing fruit set but not super heavy either. The earliest blooms got fried by frost but they still flowered pretty heavily. Compared to the last 2 years this is a jackpot season in KY though.

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Like you, @blake I lost several early blooms and felt I was in for a bad year.
But they formed some new flowers, plus there were more unharmed flowers than I realized.
With obsessive hand-pollination I am set for a nice crop. This will only be my second year in production.
Lehman’s Chiffon had an obscene amount of flowers and fruit. (I mostly neglected this one with hand-pollination). Way more than anything else i have.

Excited to have Chappell and Tallahatchie fruiting for the first time this year, as well as 5 seedlings for the first time. One is an Al Horn seedling from Cliff’s place, 2 are Lehman’s Delight seedlings from Jerry’s place, one a Susquehanna seedling from KSU orchard, and 4-25 seedling from KSU orchard.
They seem to have good-sized fruit except for the 4-25. It is in a less ideal spot, so that could have something to do with it. Also the tree is smaller and less vigorous than the others.

I’ve been thinning like crazy, down to mostly 2 fruit per cluster. I’ve probably thinned-out 150 small fruits in total, or more.

Hope you have a great year and excited to hear about the seedlings.

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If you get some winners in your seedling trial please let me know. Sounds like you have some great genetics. I’ve noticed Lehman’s varieties are very precocious, often blooming a week after I graft them! Of course you remove blooms for the first few years at least. The flowers are often quite large too and in high number. I am waiting until June fruit drop to thin mine, they are still very small.

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Large fruit sets on Nyomi’s Delicious and NC-1; first time for former, second for the latter. Moderate set on Sunflower, which has had a hard time recovering after heavy damage in our past late freezes. Also a lot of fruit on two seedlings, which I don’t think have much potential based on the light crop I got last year, but I wanted to give them another chance before attempting to topwork them. I started a few seedlings from some of trees this spring—to use as rootstock in the future.

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Most of my trees have only been at my house 1 year or less and we had a major frost. Our cherries and apples had a good amount of blooms but were bitten off by the frost and cold weather we have had. On the flip side that will encourage extra growth on my trees since no energy is being spent on fruit production. My strawberries are trying to produce though and so are my arctic raspberries. I will grow my zucchini, strawberries and basil for the summer and call it a good year. Like I mentioned for me allowing my trees and asparagus to grow will be a good thing.

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Yeah that was the story here the last 2 years - no fruit at all but lots of vegetative growth. Orcharding teaches patience.

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My pair have both flowered and it looks like there at least 6+ fruit clusters set.
This is only the second year of production, after 8 years since planting, so I’m pretty pleased. Unfortunately, our house is for sale so I will have to leave them behind.

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Yeah I hope I didn’t jump the gun. Mine had already started dropping - I’m farther ahead down here.
I figure this way I get to remove the runts and deformed fruits and hopefully the tree will keep the rest.
We’ll see!

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That looks like a super small tree for being planted 8 years ago. It looks like it is only as tall as you. My trees I just bought are as small as a person. I guess maybe it is a super small dwarf.

I’m in southern Ontario so we’re near top of range. Growth is very slow.

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Planted several seedlings in 2016, from seed I germinated mostly from Cliff England/England’s Orchard. My biggest and most precocious tree started fruiting in 2020 with 1 fruit before having 7 last year and approximately 60 this year. I was very impressed that it went from seed in 2015 to production in 2020, and good production in 2022. The fruit is large, low seed weight, best flavor seems to coincide with mushy texture, but hopefully this year that last characteristic will change. Another seedling tree has set 1 cluster of fruit for the 1st time this year. Ambrosia beetles have been a problem, attacking the trunks of my 2nd and 3rd biggest trees in 2020, striking again in 2021, and hitting my quickest growing tree again this year. Of course I’m cutting and removing those affected trees, which sprout back vigorously from the roots. Late frost this year killed a lot of blooms.

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Man sorry to hear about the beetles. Something I hope I never see.

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KSU seedling planted in 2018. Maybe it will have buds next year.

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My pawpaws are still quite small so there’s no fruit in my near future but am enjoying hearing about everyone else’s experiences! We planted them two years ago, this year is the first noticeable flush of growth, so I am hoping they are getting settled.

I fertilized with a balanced granular fertilizer this spring but have read here that they love nitrogen so I will need to track down a source with more N.

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Please anyone knows what desise is this?
Never saw this on my pawpaws and this is a new tree

It looks like a genetic deformity or virus to me. Cut out and remove the tree.

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Soybean and alfalfa meal are good sources of N and of course granulated chicken manure which is what we use.

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I’ve grafted my three seedlings over this year. I have one definite take, and two that the jury is out on. How long should I give them before I give up? I carefully unwrapped and inspected one, no obvious callus, but it’s not budging with a gentle tug, either. They both still scratch green. So I presume they’re alive, but I don’t want to wear out the rootstocks rubbing off the buds below the graft either…

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