I must be dining something wrong as I have a tiny Wabash tree setting flower buds on its 3rd year in ground. This tree is maybe 2 feet tall and has barely grown despite ample feeding. On the flip sides I have a NC-1 throwing its first blooms that is about 6ft high now.
I used a little pelletized chicken manure on some year 2 potted seedlings and had a little burning of newer growth a week later. So I would say just go light and see how they respond.
2 Likes
The tendency for some pawpaws to bloom earlier from the point of grafting is nothing odd or wrong. It’s called precociousness (precocity?) and is a common phenomenon in grafted trees. Some will bloom a year after grafting, some take 2-3 years. However, I don’t let anything under 6ft tall bear fruit. It’s too much strain on a very young tree to produce fruit and seeds.
5 Likes
Barrets Best about halfway to complete bloom. Fingers crossed we make it through the potential frost/freeze tonight. If not all the trees still have unopened flower buds.
Susquehanna(with full sun/next to Barrets Best) has the most full flowers, but the more shaded tree has very few.
7 Likes
yep, 28 F predicted here, my trees are close to yours. Will have some bloom loss here for sure. Again.
2 Likes
Hopefully at least something fruits, if so those might be good breeding parents.
1 Like
Morning after, about 50% bloom loss but still plenty of green survivors and secondary buds. We are still in the good.
5 Likes
yeah in my limited experience if the peduncle gets more thick it’s at least trying to set fruit.
2 Likes
My goal is to get substantial fruit this year and have been puzzled why I was not. I First I am in Texas 8A so things are a bit more challenging here but it seems you can grow the trees and they will get big, albeit not as fast as they do further north it seems. Anyway for a maybe 4 years I have had two trees that should be mature and big enough to fruit, one each of Mango and PA Golden. They both have been flowering for 4 years (Mango longer). The Mango reached 10ft height 3 years ago whereas PA Golden has struggled here but once I finally got it to about 4-5 ft tall, it is no longer struggling. Now it is about 8 ft tall. Took a long time to get their though, these trees are 11 years old. Mango was selected in GA so suspect it is more adapted to heat and has largely grown fine here and has been big for a while now. If I remember PA Golden actually originated in NY state so comes from more northern climates and may account for its early struggling here with the high Texas heat. I am confident now, beyond just flowering that PA Golden should be mature enough the last two years to fruit, and had flowered 2 or 3 years before that but was smaller in size. Here was the thing, I am hand pollinating Mango and PA Golden to insure good pollination. I managed to get one and only one small Mango fruit despite years of heavy flowering. PA Golden has produced nothing.
I had two possible theories. They may have been mislabeled and are the same thing so no cross pollination is going on. Could be but the Mango tree grew as you might expect, very much faster than other pawpaws, PA Golden was much much slower. The other is maybe just by bad luck and whatever genetics is behind pawpaw pollination, maybe for some reason Mango and PA Golden don’t cross pollinate. Just by bad luck and this has not been noticed by grower and KSU (that I am aware of). I have not read of others growing just these two alone to hear whether they got pollination. So the unexpected bad match for pollination was my going theory.
So I planted three other Pawpaws Shenandoah, Susquehanna and KSU Chappell. The KSU tree is now 4 years old and is flowering for the first time. Shenandoah and Susquahanna are two years old. This is not including the year they were grown at the nursury so add a year I guess to ages. Anyway Shenandoah is flowering at quite a small size this years giving me enough flowers to pollinate PA Golden. KSU Chappel started flowering this year with a few although bloomed later, but will also provide pollen for at least some of the PA Golden flowers. Mango got hit by a heat event that killed most of the tree but the trunck survived, including above the graft point so it a small tree now but looks to be flowering this year but running way late. In any event I will be able to use the pollen from Shenandoah and KSU on Mango too.
Usually what I got with PA golden was the little fruitlets after the petals fall, they might get a touch bigger, but not a lot, then at the 4 week point when the pawpaws drop fruits, it would drop all of them. This year though with other pollen sources these little fruitlets have been growing all along after petal fall and are all noticably larger at this point than past years. I expect the fruit drop that occurs to happen in maybe two week I think. But unlike all past years, this is the most promising PA Golden fruit have seen based on growth and size at roughty two weeks after petal fall. Amazingly my tiny Shenandoah with its half dozen flowers has fruitlets that are looking similar. Who knows, in two weeks maybe all PA Golden fruit will drop once again, but I suspect I am getting fruit this year, it is just looking so much better at this stage compared to all previous years. And the difference? Different pollen sources. Mango is way behind in flowering so have nothing to report on that one yet.
So I am left to wonder, are Mango and PA Golden possibly not genetically compatible for pollination? Just by bad luck I got two that don’t work together for cross pollination that was not noticed by growers that maybe never had just these two? So far it is looking this way. The other alternative they are the same tree type mislabeled but for whatever reason the Mango grew quite fast as you would expect Mango to do and for some reason the other “Mango” that was labeled PA Golden for some reason grew really slow, even in comparison to Shenandoah I have, but is the same tree thus I am not actually cross pollinating with different pollen. With the Mango tree reaching 12 feet tall, it must be mature enough to fruit, yet PA Golden pollen only managed one Mango fruit just once, a small one at that. This is likely due to the low level of self pollination that some pawpaws have and its small sized fruit might be an indicator of self pollination. Mango pollen has not resulted in any fruit maturing on PA golden. In 2-3 weeks I should know better after the fruit fall period but it is sure looking promising now. Anyone heard about these sort of pollen incompatibility at all? So far getting a different pollen source seems to be working, but the alternative pollen source would work if they were the same tree too so not conclusive. Anyway if the robustly growing fruitlets are any indication I should be getting a decent amount fo fruit this year. Hope so, this has just been so puzzling.
Edit: Just went out for a look tonight and seems fruit drop is happening now. About half have fallen. Hope the other half stay on. So far so good. Still flowers popping up too.
2 Likes
Interesting you would think those trees are big enough to fruit. Makes me wonder if they’re low in some type of nutrient causing the fruit drop. Pictures of the leaves and trees might help offer more clues. Might be worth testing the soil with your county extension office(if available)
Have you ever grafted more than one on at the same time? I’ve heard that when doing multiple grafts on one tree, one of them is bound to fail.
1 Like
Charlie gave me a free grafting lesson when I picked up my scions from him a couple weeks ago. He uses the 2x4 even when he’s bench grafting.
1 Like
I’ve done many grafts at the same time on one tree. Around 20 or so a couple times. I don’t expect them all to succeed, but most of them do.
3 Likes
instead of grafting small side branches, has anyone tried bark grafts onto a 2.5 - 3” thick trunk? (or is a cleft graft going completely across the middle still best graft for those?).
A large bark graft is my elusive graft, I’ve only attempted it on pears and none of my grafts were successful (so not super confident in them). I want to do a ton of side grafts. but around 5’ - 6’ tall i dont have many side fruiting branches on my tree (most of fruiting branches are lower since they are under a pine tree reaching towards the sunlight on one side). so from 6’ to 15-20’ its mostly just 1 main branch going up. I mostly want to graft there as im opening more sunlight, and convert my Mango to Tropical Treat as it gets more higher fruiting branches eventually.
1 Like
Bark grafts are my easiest graft by far if you know where to pry open the bark and expose the cambium- helps if someone shows you the first time. Then a nice long, flat, straight cut on the scion with a very short cut on backside to form a chisel tip for insertion plus minutely shave the cut edges of the scion.
3 Likes
I’ve done lots of bark grafts on pawpaws, they work fine. Make sure to add a support, I have more get blown over compared to other fruit trees.
Speaking of grafting what leaf length are people using today as the grafting point? I usually do something like two inches and thats usually been ok.
2 Likes
i assume that little side cut is what you are talking about here for the ‘chisel tip’ in 2m11s part?
around 2m11s he does mainly one side and a light cut on the side.
around 8m25s he does almost like a cleft V graft into the bark.
I also seen something similar to the 1st one graft, but people shaving the bark off slightly off the scion (with that curved back-end of their budding knife) exposing the cambium on the scion, then insert it.
Here is another style where shaves off at an angle on both sides:
3 Likes
I usually do the cleft unless it’s just to big to split. IMO cleft make a stronger graft.
Did mine the other day with all the other grafts. I’ve never waited to graft them and they seem to take just fine.
2 Likes
I don’t do that second long cut at an angle- not sure purpose, not necessary in my experience. One long flat cut, a say 1/4 in cut on back side to form chisel tip then an optional tiny shave along both edges of the long cut- but feel free to ignore this one- it just exposes a bit more cambium.
2 Likes