Anyone do summer pruning on Paw Paw? Doing some shortening on Apple laterals to around 3-4 buds and wondering if the same trick can work on Paw Paw.
My trees are planted tight and I’m trying to keep everything reachable. Have been festooning the longer tops towards available space. Frost took out almost all the fruit so don’t have to worry about starving them of nutrients and would like to shorten some vigorous laterals. Won’t cut any major branches until dormancy but seems like heading longer shoots could be beneficial?
I have an Al Horn from Blake that dealt with some vascular damage this spring. It sorta pushed through and put out new growth from older branching, but it’s developing some of that “cracking” in the trunk and older branching. What I find interesting is that it’s only occurring above the old original graft. Below that the bark looks smooth and clean as a whistle. Maybe certain genetics are more susceptible or there’s some delayed graft incompatibility at times?
lots of pawpaw seeds coming up right now. think I’ll plant a patch in early October, see who makes it over winter then baby the survivors. so stoked now.
putting them in tall pots as soon as i see a tap root. trying not to damage those!
you can see in the first picture they are all making progress under the surface before the seed elbow pops. last photos of them after being up potted for height, and settling in.
Well it’s just a golden deep yellow/orange color, otherwise nothing extraordinary
Some additional large Big Ben fruits below. This is the first year with this size fruits and with so many of this magnitude. Ironically all the largest fruits have been on clusters of 2-3 fruit. My singles have not reached this size.
Maybe these two related questions should be moved to another thread, but I’ll try them here with a promise not to hijack the discussion. . . .
Many trees – definitely including pawpaws – produce lots of inward-pointing growth with leaves are crowded and shaded. Intuitively (no science involved!) it seems to me that shaded leaves can’t contribute much to the growth of a tree. Also, these inward-pointing branches are destined to be removed in winter pruning. Why is my intuition wrong that removing this crowded, self-shaded growth would at worst do no harm and at best direct growth outward and upward?
FWIW, on 1-2 year old figs, apples, pears, mulberries and persimmons, I remove all side shoots to force growth into the central leader. I end up with a 5-10’ whip that is thick and vigorous. Then I head it to force branching at the height where I want branching. This is wrong?
No everything you said is fine. I summer prune my pawpaws all the time to remove suckers, unwanted branches, criss crossing shoots, etc. It’s only going to reduce vigor if you prune a lot during the summer, and for some pruning /shaping goals that may be what a person is after. Although pruning a lot of a leafed out pawpaw tree could add additional stress. So in general heavy pruning is in winter, light corrective pruning and sucker removal / below graft shoot removal in summer.
