It seems the right time to start the annual pawpaw thread for the new year!
What are your goals this year? New varieties on the horizon? Share your pawpaw journey/ obsession here!
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my few little trees are alive and limber. hoping for more green growth this year to get height!
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Make sure to mulch and apply organic fertilizer this spring
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oh i will! i want them to finally put on some height instead of creeping
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Mine just went in in the fall so im just hoping theyll leaf out. Would you still fert this year?
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Question for the group - I cut out suckering paw paw’s from the ground from trees at my last house. The suckers had lateral roots with weak rooting where I cut them and crammed them into a pot. They survived and I grafted the varieties that were grafted to the original trees to be planted at my new house (trying to not buy everything all over again!). Am I losing anything by using a sucker as rootstock versus a seedling rootstock? Will it still develop a taproot, and if not, is that important?
right now with paw paw all rootstock is seedling. we dont have any rootstock varieties developed (yet). In short its the same thing so long as it lives
I understand the rootstock originated from a seedling, but I took out a sucker from a lateral running root. I thought I read something somewhere about figs having a taproot when grown from seed but not the case from cutting - I don’t know if that’s true at all or if I’m even remembering that correctly - but if I pretend it’s true it just got me thinking about pawpaw… This could all be a very stupid question, but I’m just curious if root behaviour will be different from rootstock cut out from a sucker versus originating from a seed’s original vertical growth.
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What could be lost?
An experienced grower on the forum,feels the tap root is overrated.
There is a lady who posted a series of videos,probably on YouTube,about finding small Pawpaw trees and suckers,digging them with some roots and planting in her yard,showing their progress over a few years.They seemed to do really well.
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Looking to start a grove in the PNW. Many trees fell this year opening up some light. Any KSU Dank available?
I’d assume pawpaws would make a new taproot. All the trees I have messed with (plums, osage orange, mulberry, cherry) the suckers with just horizontal roots put down a taproot when separated from the rest of the plant.
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Mine just went in in the fall so im just hoping theyll leaf out. Would you still fert this year?
No, only fertilize after all chance of frost in spring until around early July. This allows new growth to harden off before freezes.
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I will have the new KSU varieties again in June.
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Pawpaws seem to regenerate their taproot, and suckers should work fine for rootstock or new trees if dealt with carefully and transplanted spring (maybe fall too?).
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Do you mean next year? Or this spring?
I’m eagerly awaiting my KSU Benson and Chappell to grow past the 2ft twig stage, which they’ve been stuck in since planting them in 2023. They’ve gotten damaged by heavy wet snowpack the past two Winters, but I’m ready to protect them with garbage cans this time.
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Dratted Tree Rats stole my second crop from grafted varieties this year. The seeds I planted from the excellent Peaceful Heritage Nursery put on a lot of growth this past year. Seeds to head height in three years if I’m counting right.
I planted my grove with very tight spacing and now I’m wondering how to prune it. I have seen this excellent thread on Paw Paw Pruning to reachable height and tempted to festoon some of my central leaders to keep them reachable.
I have been trimming the tops of my grafted varieties which have more space but I want to force the tighter planted seedlings to grow more towards best available space. There are no good pictures of interesting Paw Paw forms I can find searching for images.
I don’t like how Pawpaw have opposite branching and have been pruning them to have alternating scaffolds with alot of space between them. I know I’m hurting fruit production but can’t help it. Attractive wintertime form is also important to me. I have been doing a long-term timelapse of the grove and this thread is inspiring me to finally start editing something…
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I have 4 pawpaws
Shenandoah planted in spring of 2024 - I’ll likely prune out a side shoot on this one (the one on the right) to avoid a co-dominance issue and to reduce lower growth to make it easier to maintain. I would like to mimimize scaffolding on the lower 3-4 feet if possible to get it above the deer browse and make mowing easier. happy to take pruning suggestions @Blake
As for the others, I don’t plan to do anything besides watch them grow and make sure they are watered well. I had a KSU chappell that I planted in 2024 with the Shenandoah that died from lack of watering and drought in the hottest part of the summer in it’s first year. that is a mistake I won’t make again.
I have a KSU Chappell planted in Fall of 2024, a Tropical Treat planted in Summer 2025 and a Nyomi’s Delicious planted in Fall of 2025. The Tropical Treat and Nyomi’s Delicious still have shade cloth around their cages and will likely retain the shade cloth for the 2026 growing season.
Not sure if anyone else has this problem, but I noticed last year that leopard slugs loved the leaves in the spring, so I’ll be putting down some sluggo baits around the plants come time. I did this last year too, but it was after they already sustained a decent amount of damage.
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interesting about the slugs, i’ll keep an eye out since theres a lot of leopard slugs here. thanks for the tip
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Try to ferment some into beer/wine/brandy this year! I had a couple of 2-pounders this past year that were too much to eat, even though I love them. And keep collecting seed to plant more and more
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