Pawpaws in 2026!

Must be a trait of Chappell. Mine acts the same way. My other tree, a Wabash, has created the most balanced and perfect growth. 4 angled scaffolds at 4.5 ft with a central leader still climbing. Plan is to top the leader at 7-8ft, when it gets there and hopefully manage the tree at less than 15ft max height, once it is in ground.

I’m confident he has eaten enough fruit to know what ripe fruit is like. I feel good about the level of size/fleshiness pawpaws have achieved, and see flavor and cultivation techniques as the next frontier. I’m also curious to see how much earlier these selections will ripen in my climate(if at all). It would be crazy to have pawpaw season from July to October. For the most part it has been pretty concentrated in a 4-6 week period across cultivars in my high heat environment. I think I could artificially extend my season by delaying blooms or having trees in varying degrees of shade, but where is the fun in that?

Yeah that was pure sarcasm. He’s been getting loads of fruit from Ockoo for years.

But it’s another world up there north of VT. If people here are questioning my ability to ripen fruit then I should have no problem if he’s having success up there.

The few white fleshed ones out there seem to be later season so that’s good news if he’s getting some that ripen in his climate. That area does -20s easily and occasional -30s. I know Sherbrooke pulled a -42F in 2004 too.

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I saw Timothy Lane also posted another one of Vincent’s varieties I think the other day on FB.. ā€œNoel Blancā€. While it’s also pale fleshed, he said ā€œGrand Blancā€ is different (also known as 610).

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I planted it after I had read this, I followed your instructions, although I may have miscalculated the location a bit. It gets dappled sun through the morning and afternoon and full sun for an hour or two around 4-6 ish, I did everything in your instructions, adding the aged compost and wood chips on top, I’m going to fence it and shade cloth it, unfortunately I have no shade cloth nor do I have zip ties to put up the fence, it came with two bamboo stakes so I’ll probably just put a pillowcase or something of the sort on the stakes to shade it for the time being (till I can get to Lowe’s in the next week).

Once I bring the native ones over next spring, would they die if I attempted to graft some scion wood of a different species (Atwood, Chappell, Mango, Allegheny)? Also, would they be more likely to die if I attempted multiple at once?

Checking on my trees at my folks’ place in central NH, where the soil is clay/sand fill and very poor, I think (have not had it tested).

Everything is alive, but growing slowly, and mostly light green leaves (with the notable exception of a chance seedling @Buzzferver sold me that had grown 2x the height in 1 year that he normally saw, which is darker green, and which I’m calling ā€œVermont Vigorā€ and decided to grow out and see what it’s like instead of grafting to it). Attached representative photos.

How would you fertilize these or improve soil? I added black wood mulch last year; was thinking of adding a layer of Black Kow compost and then more mulch on top of that.

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Just finished grafting my extra pawpaw scionwood, mostly onto my largest tree side branches (Mango) which alot of people don’t seem to like if it’s mushy (I think it’s fine but thought would be fun to get Tropical Treat and Al Horn on there). I probably have 60+ grafts on five trees. The ones from last week are already leafing out.
Got rid of alot of low branches which made walking difficult around that area (was torn about doing that since it’s kinda nice the fruit falls with no damage there [but also puts fruit closer to the ground so no effort for animals to sniff n pull off]).

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Dutchess County NY Z6A…I’m not the guy to advise you about grafting…never made a graft in my life…plenty others here with years experience that can can help you there…just make sure you ultimately wind up with two different cultivars or a cultivar plus wild tree or wild seedling for pollination purposes…you do not want to wait 3-5 years till first bloom and then have no cross pollination…good luck…Beemster

Make sure the wood chips are not touching the trunk of the tree. Push them a few inches back. I’ve had too many problems with critters using the wood chips as protection while they attack my trees (and I know things don’t really eat pawpaw - until they do…).

The pawpaw are the only young trees or plants I have that aren’t fenced - however, deer do like to rub the bark on them so I’ve fenced the older ones! And this year the deer and rabbits are very hungry so I might end up with more fencing.

I would really suggest planting them and letting them establish a year or even two before trying to graft to them. While I have not had special difficulty grafting to pawpaw it’s not the easiest. I think you need a bit of vigor before grafting pawpaw. Then non-vigorous ones just seem to grow below the graft and ignore it entirely.

Yes, this is true. However, as a bunch of us tried this year with hand pollination - it works really well. If you find yourself without a pollinator, you can find someone with a pawpaw or a wild tree and get some pollen and bring it back and pollinate your tree.

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If you don’t want to test the soil and you don’t know what it is and you’re not there very often, I’d just put some slow release multipurpose fertilizer pellets around the trees.

Dutchess County NY Z6A

Northeast US Drought Monitor

…

…things are setting up for a rough summer for pawpaws in the northeast…no matter how good your site may be, an extended drought on a full sun site will stress the trees very badly…so far, only .21 inches of rain this month out of a normal 2.5 inches for the first 20 days of June…this is after a modestly dry May…forecast is for rain (lots) tomorrow
…setting up watering system for the patch (automated timer / hose splitter / etc )… can’t keep manually going down there…Beemster
…


…

good site for temp. data
…

Poughkeepsie NY 2026 data
…bloom seems to occur around 250-260 GDD 50F

Dutchess County NY Z6A

graph depicting current drought in Poughkeepsie
…normal to date this year 17.97 inches
…total this year to date 11.24 inches

hoping for big rain tomorrow…Beemster
…

That Gran Blanc cultivar looks and sounds incredible

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Some reddit poster claims you’ll be getting some in January?

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Do you have a link to that post?

The graft union is at the point of the green tape. I see a green shoot just above the graft union on the left in the photo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pawpaws/comments/1t04tru/comment/oj8i6lh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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Dutchess County NY Z6A…update…only .81 inches from storm in my rain gauge…not near enough…Beemster

What Vincent is doing up there is really interesting. Apparently he got a root sucker of the original NC1 and it actually produces white flesh in Canada? I can’t quite understand where all of the white fleshed genetics are coming from up there. He has said he didn’t discover pawpaws until 2019…so I’m not sure how he has all of these fruiting seedlings already in his zone 4. And if it’s really an OP Peterson cultivar then it’s pretty wild that it’s white and only 2% seed. No one else has supposedly tasted it yet so we’ll see…hopefully not marketing hype. It’s just a little bizarre.

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Yup. Since then, it’s putting out some late and uneven but strong growth, including a few ginormous leaves.

Will spread some Immunox at the base this wknd at Tim’s suggestion.