All the Peterson pawpaw varieties are blooming and I don’t trust the flies for doing their job.
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Looks great Tony, I can’t wait till my sticks are even half that size!
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This year I hung 3 to 5 small cloth bags of bloodmeal in my trees. Zero pollination. It was cold and windy during most of bloom period so that may have kept flies away too.
Next year I’m going back to road kill and fish emulsion.
Hand pollinates with a small paint brush for insurance. Always worked out well for me. I can’t depend on the flies. I got about 100 pounds of pawpaws yearly.
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I don’t have the patience or eyesight to hand pollinate but I admire your effort.
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You are at least a week ahead of me.
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I can already see tiny fruitlets forming on some of flowers I hand pollinated. There were too few flowers that survived freezes to count on mother nature taking care of the task for me. Thanks again Tony!
@mamuang Did you get enough varieties for cross pollination this year?
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@PharmerDrewee
I don’t. I have Sunflower graft setting a few flowers. All I have re. pollen was from Sunflower of my friend’s tree (the mother tree). I hand pollinated Sunflower pollen to my Sunflower flowers anyway.
My Sunflower flowers.
I’ve also learned something. My Shenadoah’s flowers were not as cold hardy as Sunflower’s. Before the freeze, Shenandoah had several flower buds. Now, only one has survived. Not sure if it will grow to maturity.
Also, my Mango, which is 6 ft tall and happy growing is having ONE flower this year. I hope the flower hangs on.
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Tony,
How’s the Merrill and Kentucky Champion,any flowers this year?bb
They got a few flowers but the late frost got them. Maybe next year. Fingers crossed.
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@mamuang You make an interesting observation about Shenandoah’s frost resistance. My experience is similar to yours. I had about a dozen flowers on Shenandoah but only 1 survived the freeze. Potomac had several survive and is even pushing new flower buds out of nowhere now so I will end up with perhaps a dozen Potomac flowers. Wabash lost all of its flowers but is also pushing perhaps 6 new flowers.
Isn’t Sunflower supposed to be one of those self-fertile varieties?
Sunflower is supposed to be self fertile. My friend’s tree must be 10 years old. It had 100+ flowers each year. He has gotten about 5-10 fruit a year, very low yield if you ask me! He does not do anything re. pollination. This year, his seedling tree has one flower, I suggest he poliinate it with Sunflower.
Shanandoah flowers were brown and crispy. Mango (5 years old) takes forever to flower. Sunflower (grafted in 2018) is quite precocious. It has about 10 flowers this year.
5-10 fruit sounds abysmally low to me. I allowed my Potomac to keep 5 fruit last year after only 2 full years of growth. It likely would have held onto more but I did not want to stress out such a young tree. Thank you for confirming the importance of cross pollination.
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Andrew,
To my dismay, I went to check my pawpaw flowers (that I pollinated) yesterday, the ones in the pic above. They were gone. I could not find them anywhere on the ground. I don’t think they dropped. I think something took them. Their dark red color could have attracted some critters.
I only have 5 flowers left. These are young flowers. I hope they will develop to maturity. Very disappointing.
Here are the efforts of my hand pollination. They seem to be forming fruit clusters. I hope they don’t drop.
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Tippy, you only need a few flowers. Each one can form whole clusters of fruit!
I know but I would love to find out what took my two flowers so I could prevent it.
I am being extra nice to my friend whose pawpaw tree is full of flowers. 
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