Does anyone know what paw paw varieties are better in part shade?
I have 4 paw paw trees: one SAA Overleese and a KSU Atwood are in full sun. I also have an NC-1 and another SAA Overleese in part shade (there was a shipping mishap that resulted in me getting the 2nd SAA Overleese for free, then the first one showed up a week later).
The sunny SAA Overleese is my favorite paw paw in my yard by far. Reliable, delicious, vigorous, precocious.
The shady SAA Overleese was a bit of a dud. It set fruit, but a bunch of them ended up looking sooty black and falling off before fully ripening, so it set less than half as many fruit as the sunny one. I tried to top work it to KSU Chappel in spring 2022, but my grafts didn’t take. I think my problem was that I grafted the trunk about 5’ high, leaving 4 big branches of SAA Overleese below (I was hoping to hedge my bets and increase pollination), and I think all the energy went into leafing out and growing the SAA Overleese branches, instead of into the scions.
In any event, I’m looking to re-try topworking this rootstock again in spring 2023, lower down the trunk and removing all original branches/buds. I have since read somewhere (I forget where) that KSU Chappel doesn’t do well in shade, and might have the same sooty fruit problem that the SAA Overleese had.
Which all brings me back to my original question: does anyone know what variety would do better in the shady spot?
No, don’t let anybody convince you your little trees are anything other than pawpaws.
I do doubt if the tall straight tree and it’s ridged bark is a pawpaw though.
Best time to look for pawpaw is probably July. Or early August. They might not be ripe, but you’ll locate them and know the places to come back to in one, three or five weeks!
Thanks! That’s the word I was looking for… phylosticta. The Google pictures were exactly what happened to my shady SAA Overleese tree.
Other than Prima 1216, are there any other phylosticta-resistant varieties? Or resources where I can research that? I feel like there must be, cause I think I remember reading somewhere that the KSU Chappel is susceptible, but I don’t remember where
Thanks so much for the offer! I may hit you up in a few months! If you have any Benson available then, Richard’s link indicates that it is not very susceptible. Also, thank you for finding that link, that is the resource I couldn’t quite remember reading before!
Just tried my Central pawpaw. Thanks to @JustPeachy for all of the fruits.
Think I recall a post upthread that said it resembled a wild pawpaw, but I found mine to have a surprising amount of flesh…seemed on par with my shenandoahs. I must have the palette for these things because I really enjoyed the intense flavor. Even my picky wife kept asking for seconds. Mine was very soft, but I didn’t pick up on any bitter aftertaste. It was definitely more strong than sweet, but I like it that way. I wasn’t planning to grow any of these seeds out, but a few were very large so I may find a home for them in the backyard.
My Horne seedling got moved from shade to full sun in the hottest days of June…so it’s alive but I can’t say it’s totally unblemished. Moved from 3 gallon pot to in-ground.
Here’s my GW from the other night. A better name for it would probably be George Washington considering pawpaw was supposedly his favorite fruit and it would keep the same Garage West acronym.
@weatherandtrees I dunno if the camera’s white balance or lighting is throwing it off, but that garage west looks a bit paler than it should. Unripe and overripe pawpaws are my bane. If it you have a slightly hard pawpaw, put it on the counter for a few days. If it isn’t smelling tropical, it isn’t ripe.
The sizes were off this year. Central is routinely double the size of what I sent out. Mangos came out this year smaller than a baseball, when they should be double or triple the size. The Allegheny I have planted elsewhere (not ripe yet) has fruit the size of the Centrals I sent out.
I should say I like Central. It’s in the Allegheny fruity ilk but a tad more mild. Some years it can be a bit more phenolic than others, but I have no idea what they were this year because I sent it all out, as there was so little of it. Garage west tastes coconutty to me. That’s the only way I can describe it.
@dpps there’s really no such thing as better in shade vs better in sun pawpaw. Pawpaws are by definition understory trees. In the forest succession they would eventually come into full sun once the deciduous forest cover dies back. Once they are in bearing age, all of the pawpaw should do better in full sun, just as any fruit tree would. People that put pawpaw seedlings in the full sun before bearing age are just artificially stressing their trees. Put them in a tree tube. It’s not like a stone fruit tree or apple where it’s ready for full sun from day 1. The rest of the common fare tree fruits are not understory trees in nature.
Would some cultivars be more forgiving about being in the shade then others? Yeah, but that’s also the case with any other fruit like apples, pears, cherries, etc… People often put fruit saplings in tree tubes for the first year. With pawpaws, I’d do it for two years+ unless you’re wildlife planting with natural tree cover or on the north side of your home.
@disc4tw Having now tried Prima 1216, it’s not my jam. It reminds me too much of NC-1. It’s heavier flavored, at least that is the way Cliff and I describe it.
It definitely had plenty of give to it, but I do think I should’ve given it another couple of days. Like I said up thread it was more white than yellow and I got the taste of coconut as well…with a little hint of vanilla.
My notes (from reading, not experience) on phylosticta:
Very susceptible: Chappelle, NC-1; Potomac; Sunflower;
Somewhat susceptible: Shenandoah; Susquehana; Mango
A good breeding goal: keep great taste of Chappelle and Atwood but breed out C’s phylosticta trait and A’s unripe white sections trait (in warmer zones).
Something to note: Neither of my shady trees had phylosticta on the leaves. The shady SAA-Overleese had normal, large, green leaves, but only the fruit would get the phylosticta. And even then, it was only some of the fruit, not all of it. The NC-1 is a beautiful tree, tall, beautiful shape (like a big deciduous christmas tree), big green leaves. The NC-1 has not fruited yet. It set flowers this year (spring 2022) for the first time, but all of the little fruitlets dropped off before ripening. Maybe because of the drought this summer? It has a lot of little baby flower buds growing on it right now, though. So, hopefully, the NC-1 will bear fruit in 2023. Since it is listed as very susceptible both by you and in the link from richard above, I hope the fruit doesn’t have the same sooty phylosticta problem!!! The NC-1 is such a beautiful tree, I would hate to have to mess with it or topwork it, etc. (I could only bring myself to mess with the shady SAA-Overleese, which was also a beautiful looking tree, because I had the sunny SAA Overleese as a bigger, better, backup).
First Mango pawpaw. Planted this grafted tree in the spring of 2015. It has grown very vigorously. It took 8 years to flower and fruit. Possibly because it is in a mostly shade area.
I have been growing them the last 12 years and ate quite a bit from my orchard: Mango, Shenandoah, Susquehanna, Wabash, VE-21, Sunflowers, Kentucky Champion seedling, Halvin, and a few wild ones from persimmon Bob called Lakeshore and some in my area. Hopefully I can get some seeds of the KSU 1-4 soon that would be great. I just grafted a Carmelo pawpaw scion from @JustPeachy this may. Too bad my Cherimowest scion broke off by a bird. Hopefully, I will get a chance to re-graft it again because I think it tasted close to Cherimoya. I also crossed Mango with Kentucky Champion seedling and got 15 seeds and hopefully plant the new Hybrid next spring at my new house.
