Very good. I’ve got several of them. Not all of them are something I would slap a name on and sell, but they all taste good. One of them is exceptional and will be getting a name to pass around to everyone. Pic above in the page 22 range. @jrd51
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You are correct.
It is Puddin Cup#3, grown by Sue Stevens who is the wife of Austin Cliffe. I received a box full of ‘Puddin Cup 2’ in the fall of 2023. It was a long-distance shipment requiring a few days and the fruit held up exceedingly well for pawpaws. I have not experienced PC#3.
Q: I know heat helps a lot with starting pawpaw seeds. But once they’ve started, how necessary is heating them to move the seedlings along until it’s warm enough to move outside (I’m in Boston area).
Trying to figure out how I’m going to allocate space and heat mats between upstairs and basement (50F). I think I could germinate upstairs and then move successful starts to tree pots in basement, but the light and heat would be more limited there.
I’ve only started pawpaw from seed once, but when I did I had similar concerns.
After they germinated, I turned off the heat mats. The extra heat was drying out the potting soil too quickly for me. They were around 55F in my garage under grow lights and grew just fine.
I’ve no idea if they would have grown faster in warmer conditions, but they seemed happy enough.
Maybe you could use the heat mats in the basement where it’s otherwise cold, and then move plants upstairs where it’s warmer after they germinate?
Was that “Slab Road” by chance? If so it came from me. He showed me how vigorous it was this summer and couldnt stop talking about how much bigger it was from the others!
I will be gathering scion this year from a wild tree near me which makes large fruit and has free stone qualities – the flesh doesn’t adhere to the seeds which can very easily be spit out or pulled out flesh free.
Honestly I’m not interested in establishing a cultivar pawpaw orchard except that i will graft a few varieties onto root suckers in my woods. I live in the thick of pawpaw country on the susquehanna and many of them are very good. When you can gather 100# of quality fruit per day during the season it’s like… what’s the use in growing them!
There aren’t many trees around me i would describe as wild/metallic tasting. But those do exist, in little patches here and there. Maybe its a legacy of indigenous management, but most fruits are pretty good, and there are countless trees which make 2 lb fruits as good as any of the cultivars i’ve tried.
I’ve heard Jerry Lehman used to look for pawpaw selections along the Susquehanna.
Just saying, don’t neglect the wild populations! Plenty of great selections out there waiting.
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Thanks for the rundown!
Never knew there was so much work being done with pawpaws. They need to put a little time into making black knot proof plums.
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That’s good to know. I’ve only seen a couple abandoned pawpaws someone planted. They were moderately big. About medium apple tree size.
I don’t think it was tagged! I figured he grew it. You gave it to him?
If it’s the one i’m thinking of (Slab Road) it’s a wild one from my property with exceptional fruit. I gave him scionwood of it.
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why not, can just throw them into local parks (or state gameland) if you don’t have space or give to friends with space to trial.
I put well over a thousand select seeds into a very large park last year.
Although, you may want to grow the seeds out at your house and put them in parks later in the fall as its really hard to find your plants in a large park if planted by seed. Like i planted some seeds in the same parks 8 years ago and could only find them 3-4 years later when they were larger plants (esp if they growing slow as understory trees with a little natural/weed competition). But the 1 year old 8"+ tall plants I planted last fall are easy to find with their larger size and i have ‘eye memory’ on where they are located whenever i see them on the park trails.
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That’s a good point. Already though there is a fair amount of diversity among breeding projects. Collectively this includes KSU, the late Jerry Lehman, England, Peterson and myself least of all.
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2 lbs wild fruits? Have you actually weighed them? 2lbs is enormous for a pawpaw fruit and very, very few cultivars have ever claimed to be able to attain such size. You might be onto something there if this is true.
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Hm, i must be misremembering then. I have a friend who weighs them when he gathers and i remember him commenting about picking “pounders” all day long. I thought he said 2 pounders but i just referenced a scale and you’re right, two pounds seems pretty enormous. However, one pound fruits per definitely seem within the scope of a good season here.
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If a pawpaw regularly produces even 1 lb fruit that would be considered large fruited. Although large is of course just one criteria.
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Excerpt from conversation with Austin Cliffe, 1/5/2025: “PC3 is one of my seedling trees that is from the two old DeKalb trees, which I called VP1 and PC1. PC1 took third in 2015. Sue is my wife, as you probably guessed, and it was her entry into the Ohio Pawpaw Festival. Coincidently it took 5th in Indiana, and it happened to ripen our earliest fruit this year on August 15.”
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Nice
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In conclusion: PC1 (Puddin Cup), and VP1 (Velvet Pineapple) are the names given to two old pawpaw trees at an old house in DeKalb, Illinois. The two trees are very old and are in serious decline. No one knows who planted them or when, because the house has changed ownership many times. The trees have been mature and fruiting since at least the 1990’s.
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