We had one late freeze that destroyed 99% of our pawpaw fruit and blooms this year, but Florence White (in a slightly protected location) is loaded with large fruit. Tim Lane was really impressed with the quality of it, and it’s one of my top varietals. If the late freeze hadn’t occurred we were set for a bumper crop year, would have been many hundreds of pounds of fruit. I’m purchasing smudge pots for future freeze events.
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Very likely. That’s why we can’t smear any variety too hard under all circumstances (although admittedly I was the original ‘Mango is awful’ guy, lol).
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Mango is my favorite pawpaw
Fell in love with it at edible landscaping
I’m in the mid Atlantic
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I asked Timothy Lane what the worst pawpaws he had were and the PA Golden (at least the #1 version of it) he mentioned…
If you’re looking for a zone 5/6 variety, maybe Maria’s Joy or Allegheny are early ones that are supposed to taste good (vs PA Golden/VE-21). Not sure about Summer Delight but that also is early.
Here is a list of possible early zone 5/6 pawpaws… (Minus Prima 1216 which initially was early for Tim but now I think is spread out or late).
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Great to know as I have Allegheny here in Colorado 5B
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Ok I have no idea where else to ask this but could I buy some pawpaw fruit from someone here, sometime later this year? I haven’t tried any but have three trees as an experiment here in Colorado. We sometimes get super early frosts so don’t know how consistent they will be once big
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I forgot to add that Timothy sent me this earlier this year…
Nyomi 's Delicious – early-to-mid for me.
Benny’s Fav – early-mid
Allegheny – is definitely early
KY Champion – no blooms yet. Overleese has a similar flower overlap, but is a bit later ripening (or so I’ve inferred in talking to James Dingus about his Overleese)
Maria’s Joy – early, maybe the earliest; both trees ripen in unison
Halvin – for me, this one is midseason.
VE-21 – Early, training off into mid. After MJ, just before Nyomi
NC-1 is late (but not late-late like Tr. Treat)
Regulus – mid-late for me
Benson – Early into mid
Prima – late, for sure. It started early it’s first few seasons, but changed with time (I need to do an erratum on my video about this)
Shenandoah – Early to Late (this one has a long flower and fruit ripening window. It’s a great across-the-board pollinator)
Susquehanna – Mid into Late. Tending late.
Atwood – Mid. Thoroughly midseason.
Green River Belle – Late late. Late AF.
Sunflower – Late late.
Potomac – Late, solid.
Yuri russian – Late late
Wabash – mid-late (first season bearing was last year; single data point)
Chappell – first season bearing this year
JBGirl – first bearing season this year
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Dutchess County NY Z6A…FYI…Allegheny (early) ripened for me (Poughkeepsie NY) last year in 142 days…(May 9 to Sept 27)…only about 4 days before Chappell (mid)…typical last frost is around May 5 and first frost is around Oct 9… about 158 frost free days
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That’s extremely useful information there, appreciate you taking the time to send that along! I understand PA Golden has greatly fallen out of favor for many but strangely enough, it was consistently the variety I preferred the most out of all the kinds I’ve tried so far, as oddly as that sounds. I looked into them and specifically #3 is supposedly the best of the line but it’s a messy history with poor records.
I’ll give the others some thought too, hopefully I can try those as well for comparison. A good PA Golden in my opinion stands right there with other big names but the seed count was dramatically higher.
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I understand, Mango has fallen out of flavor but it’s a workhorse out of my 5 trees (probably because it gets more sun and it’s known as a fast growing variety), and it tastes good to me :). I’ll take some video of how many fruits on that tree now versus the others and post later today or tomorrow (even with our April “91F to below freezing” frost).
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Reliable annual production, especially in spite of these increasingly anomalous growing seasons, remains an extremely high priority to me. Flavor means nothing if I only get the fruit under specific conditions (why I wouldn’t even try Susquehanna in my area due to being too late). I think pawpaw is generally well suited to be robust and reliable, especially extended bloom and fruit harvest windows with cultivars like Shenandoah, which should remain an absolute top tier option for most people in my opinion.
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My Chappell fruited for the first time this year. The few fruit look good so far and the leaves are pristine. The only tree I’ve noticed some phyllosticta with this year is summer delight. If I see any leaves showing it I usually prune them off and don’t let them break down into the soil in the fall. There’s a lot of fungal pressure here though on most trees and plants. Even all of the native maples look like a mess by this time of year.
As for Timothy Lane’s fruits…I’ve gotten 15lbs of it from him over the last couple years. Usually I don’t catch him until mid to late season. I think the only one I wasn’t wild about was Tom Wahl’s Jenny’s Twin, but that fruit came via IA first. All of the others I really enjoyed despite some slight differences…Susquehanna, Shenandoah, Tallahatchie, MJ, NC1, Regulus, Sunflower, Mango, Nyomi, Atwood, Prima, GRB, Trop Treat, and Halvin. Not sure if I’ve left any out there. He did have one particular Susquehanna that wowed me so much that I separated the seeds from the other Susquehannas, but of course none of those germinated this year.
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Biggest harvest here ever- a rare occurrence when insect, raccoon and weather gods all smile on my orchard the same year.
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Good to know! In Colorado we get actually pretty hot in the summer with upper 90s most of July/august so hopefully our heat helps them ripen faster
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Dutchess County NY Z6A… if you are interested and FWIW…Allegheny ripened here at about 2670 Gdd 50F last year on Sept 26…bloom was May 9 at about 260 Gdd 50F…total Gdd 50F until the first frost on Oct 10 was 2835…I believe I can fully ripen any pawpaw here before the first frost in all but the exceptional year…my guess is Gdd 50F is somewhat higher here than in Golden Colorado…Beemster
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Our KSU Chappell trees are also pretty spotless this year, despite extreme moisture. Summer Delight seems very prone to phylosticta, and is a slow grower. I’ve noticed some of Jerry Lehman’s lines seems prone to black spot and phylo. 166-66 Canary is always reliably covered in black spot, and a number of his other selections seem especially susceptible.
Avatar is an early, good pawpaw that has not been widely grown yet (the mother tree is in decline and produces very little useable wood), but is a solid early variety (late August/early Sept) I carry in the nursery.
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I finished tasting the varieties from my little pawpaw patch about a week ago and thought I’d do a report. The patch is 8-10 trees planted in a row about 3 feet long with various cultivars grafted on them. Not the best way to grow them of course, but I’m out of room and wanted to try a bunch of varieties and then I’ll probably plant out grafted trees of a couple later on.
There was a lot of flowering this year (first year flowering) but only 3 bunches set - 1 on SAA Overlease, 1 on Canopus and 1 on Regulus. I also have Naomi’s Delicious and Maria’s Joy in the batch, but they didn’t set anything this year. Each bunch was 5-6 fuitlets and based on advice from folks here I thinned that to 2 fruit per tree. Surprisingly they all held. For reference ’ve only tasted wilds before. I expect flavor and certainly size may improve as the trees mature, but here’s what the first crop was like.
SAA overlease - a little 6 foot tree and the fruit weren’t very big which wasn’t surprising given the small tree. Very nice lighter flesh, good custardy texture and a great taste. What was really nice is the seeds were pretty much freestone, which I hadn’t expected. That makes for a nice eating experience, particularly on smaller fruit.
The Canopus tree is larger and I expect it overall makes bigger fruit, although these weren’t particularly large yet. Good flavor, but not as good as SAA Overlease and sort of run of the mill compared to the average wild type in the patch I forage along the Potomac. Hopefully they get better down the road as the tree matures. Seeds weren’t too clingy, but not as freestone as SAA Overlease.
Below are the 2 Regulus I had. Probably among the best tasting pawpaws I’ve ever had, but keep in mind I haven’t had a bunch of modern cultivars. Lighter fleshed than Canopus with a bit of cherimoya taste to them, although it has been so long since I’ve eaten cherimoya that might be open to debate. Some black spots behind the seeds sort of next to the skin on one of them. The flesh was very clingy with the seeds when cut open but came off pretty easily when eating, more so than the wild pawpaws I get.
I look forward to see how the flavor and size develops as the trees mature. I would say I was surprised how early they ripened compared to the ones in the woods around her, but of course my trees are getting a lot more sun - probably 6 hours direct. Curious if others have these varieties and what they think of them since I haven’t seen too many reports on these particular cultivars.
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Are you saying the trees were planted about 3-4 inches apart, or about 3 ft apart? I’m running out of space but would like to plant out the 7-8 varieties I grafted this Spring some where in my yard. Also, how old are these trees that are now producing for you? Thanks.
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Yup, that’s about how they are. It might be closer to 4” I guess, but they are definitely packed in. Of course the roots can stretch out to the sides, but they are definitely pretty close. The trunks could eventually grow into each other, so if you were doing this for a longer term clump, I’d probably make the line zig zag back and forth to give them more trunk room.
They are growing up with limited branching and I’ll keep it that way so the overall planting isn’t too dense and some light gets through to all, but it certainly isn’t a long term solution. I may cut down all but 3 at some point when I decide which to keep. I know some people plant them in clumps of 2 or 3 for better pollination and I see them growing close to each others in the woods.
Earlier in the season I posted about putting one of my corpse flowers out by the pawpaws to try to draw pollinators and you can see the planting pretty well there. Not sure the corpse flower really helped in terms of fruit set, but it is also just as likely the trees just weren’t ready to carry much fruit. You can see pictures of the patch there to see how they’re planted.
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