Is NC-1 early per online descriptions or late as Michael Judd tells me? Am designing a market orchard and need to know. Bred in Canada, it’s hard to believe it ripens late. Maybe MJ got a mis-labelled ID.
Kentucky Champion: Does taste impress or is big honker its major asset?
Well, on an island in the St. Lawrence in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
I’ve heard KY Champion can be a shy bearing variety.
I’ve tasted 1 NC-1 fruit; Pleasant, heavy on the pawpaw flavor. Not sure on relative ripening dates.
I thought Campbell is/was from Ontario. Most of the St. Lawrence is pretty bitter cold from what I understand. Bill Mackantley who ran St Lawrence nursery would often talk about the winter temps there in Potsdam, NY, sometimes dipping into the - 40’s. I may be misinformed.
I have NC-1 and it’s very good. The fruit is very large. I’d describe it as extremely creamy and rich flavored, with relatively low “paw paw” (I.e. off) flavors. I’d compare it a bit to Shenandoah in that respect. It ripens around Oct. 10 here in SE Vermont. It’s about a week later than PA Golden (no idea which of the 4 I have) and much preferable in flavor flavor and texture IMO. I have somewhat limited experience with ripening times here for comparison, but I’d consider it mid-season.
I checked with George Hale who won at the Ohio pawpaw festival with NC-1.
He confirmed it’s on the early end for him in Indiana.
@hobilus
Thank you for the correction. The site was at the mouth of the Niagara at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
See page 452, middle column, 2nd full paragraph:
Peterson 2003 - Pawpaw Variety Development.pdf (271.3 KB)
Thanks everyone; I still need to track down taste and productivity of Kentucky Champion.
They are at opposite ends of the spectrum. NC1 is very strongly flavored. Up there with Susquehanna in terms of pawpaw intensity. Not for everyone. KYC is not really a good orchard tree from what I’ve heard other than for a season extender. It has problems with pollination and the fruit is good but not top tier. I’ve got it but I like to collect oddball stuff.
I have both of those, but they have not fruited yet. How much aftertaste do they have?
Thanks for your assessment; you prevented me from giving a major place in orchard to a sub-par performer.
Arguing about flavor is about as reliable and useful as arguing about color, IMO. NC-1 is firm and has an avocado like consistency. To my palate that tempers the flavor while a watery consistency like PA Gold highlights the objectionable qualities. Funny about paw paw how there seems to be a somewhat common experience of declining interest and taste for the fruit. It started out as one of my primary interests fruit-wise, and is pretty far down my list of things I grow that I’ll actually eat much of anymore. I suppose for me, the aftertaste of certain paw paw varieties is veeeery long, almost indefinite, in fact! NC-1 is on my short list of ones I still enjoy, though. To me, that makes it “mild”, whatever that means
I wonder if the folks who object to the pawpaw aftertaste have similar objections to the aftertaste of mango and tropical guava?
Those are two top tier fruits as far as I’m concerned. I would eat myself silly on them if I could grow them! I like strong flavors of all kinds. Rich, complex, musky, all good attributes IMO. But there is a quality about paw paw that seems to cause a conditioned response over time. Others have noted this as well.
I’ve probably had more other Annonaceous fruit varieties at this point than paw paw varieties. Some of these have been so delicious that I couldn’t even really fathom their connection to paw paw. At the time (in some cases) I’d wish and hope that somewhere there was a paw paw as good as a perfect Cherimoya, for example. Funny thing is, I love Cherimoya so much (or so I thought) that I ordered a big box of them from an online retailer. I actually wanted my kids to taste how good they were. But when they arrived, I was so disappointed. They reminded me of paw paws! They had a bitter alkoloid-ish aftertaste, and the dominant flavor was sort of a burnt caramel kind of quality. They had none of the tropical bubblegum/ice cream quality I’d come to associate with cherimoya. They were so bad, in fact, that I complained. I thought maybe they’d been picked too early. They asked if I wanted my money back (~$150 or so, I think) or replacement fruit, and I naively chose the latter. When they arrived a few weeks later, they were identical. My kids wouldn’t eat them. Wife thought they were meh. And me, the die hard cherimoya fan who dropped some bank on this box of what I considered sort of “worlds tastiest fruit”, wound up eating about half begrudgingly by myself and pitching the rest in the compost. It had to be the variety, I believe now. They were grown in Chile, incidentally, and had very much the flavor of a bad paw paw (my conditioned bias at this point) and the same watery texture I dislike especially in the paw paw varieties I now basically won’t eat. As I say, NC-1 is still good in my book, so that my definition of “mild” or “little aftertaste”
There are millions of wild pawpaw around the house here. Sadly the aftertaste of most of them is so potent they are not worth messing with. I planted several named varieties thinking they did not have any aftertaste, but that is not true for all of them. That’s why I ask first now. @Richard I love mango. Never really got any bad taste from them. Stringy is about as bad as they get.
Mangoes are my absolute #1 favorite fruit. Tropical guavas are not my favorite only because of their large seeds — I much prefer Feijoa which I find similar but better.
I started out very interested in pawpaw but I find I cannot eat more than 1 a day. There’s something about it that I cannot describe— it smells incredible, tastes great too. But the after taste is not enjoyable. Some pawpaws have made me sick in the past.
I grew up eating their tropical cousins like sugar apple and cherimoya. Those I can keep eating without any issues.
NC-1 is my favorite Pawpaw for flavor / Taste , texture,so far.
But I have not tried them all.
It won the taste test at the Ohio paw paw festival in 2021.
So that says something !
It Has the biggest , darkest green , most tropical looking leafs of any Pawpaw I have seen , a nice specimen tree for a front yard .
Not as high yielding as some others, usually large fruit.very good in my opinion.
,
My Kentucky champions have not fruited so far,so cannot comment on that one .
The dark green is a noted characteristic of NC-1 , yep.
I agree with the comments about the potency, if you will, of pawpaws. It’s not something I can eat a ton of at one time. (Not unlike durian.)
In peak season I can eat maybe 2 or 3 spread out in a day. But that’s max. I have never had an issue with aftertaste. If anything I enjoy the lingering flavors.
But I have suspected that eating 1-2 per day during the 4 week season or so has altered my tastebuds. I’ve sensed a semi-permanent metallic type of taste during this time, until I stop eating ‘em.
I need more time to know for sure if this is real or imagined.
As much as I talk about pawpaws, I agree that they are more of a novelty than something like a perfect mango (or cherimoya) that I would gorge on.
That said, I do crave pawpaws at times.
When it comes to pawpaw it is really about the metal aftertaste. Even the wilds around the house here taste great till you get to the aftertaste. I assumed named varieties would have focused on eliminating that, but that does not seem to be their focus. If you could totally eliminate the aftertaste pawpaw would be an excellent fruit.
Thank you for the apt description.
