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Post by woodeye on Aug 28, 2022 13:18:35 GMT -6
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 28, 2022 13:59:48 GMT -6
I'll bet they were really something to find like that years ago, when the woods used to be full of them! I've had my eyes on some beauties this season. The squirrels have chiseled a few of them, but so far, they don't like eating the seeds once they gnaw into the fruit, so they just leave them lying around. Maybe, they'll give up on the idea of them being any good. Some of these are weighing in at 10 ounces. My largest one to date was 12 ounces, but that wasn't in a drought year. I gave that one to George. Hopefully, he'll eventually get some good fruit going over his way. I think they will really enjoy his situation over there. They seem to thrive along creeks and on bottom land. George has plenty of that around his place.I like the looks of this freckled fruit. I wonder what causes that? I'll bet this is an extra sweet one!This one is just a youngster, hanging from my baby Wells Pawpaw tree (The one that is only 5 or 6 years old). That sure was a surprise this Spring when I saw that one blooming. I sure didn't think it would bear fruit this early on.
(I've got plenty of Scion Wood from Wells and Shenandoah if anyone within driving distance ever wants to try their hand at grafting). I've tried it more than once, but my grafts never survive my woodworking skills.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 3, 2022 13:26:29 GMT -6
I've found some exceptionally meaty pawpaws this week, which is absolutely amazing, considering how dry the summer growing season was this year.
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Post by hmoosek on Sept 3, 2022 13:56:43 GMT -6
Can you grow those from seed? Well…that’s a stupid question. I mean, will they grow true from seed or are they like apples, where they don’t grow exactly as.
Just curious.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 5, 2022 16:48:32 GMT -6
Moose,
That's a good question. I don't imagine they'll grow true from seed if they were grafted. I have a few named varieties here, but I purchased them from a nursery as seedlings, so I don't know if they were grafted or if they grew them from seeds?
I have a few babies growing here and there, that I've grown from seeds, but none of them are old enough to bear yet, so I don't know what to expect. My hope is that they make good pollen donors, even if the fruit is of poor quality.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 31, 2023 21:48:40 GMT -6
Today, I picked up twenty, big, fat, ripe, Pawpaws! We'll be eatin' high off the hog for the next few days now!
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Post by woodeye on Sept 1, 2023 4:41:59 GMT -6
Good going! 👏
You've probably answered the question before, do the grasshoppers tend to leave the pawpaws alone?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 1, 2023 11:27:39 GMT -6
In normal years the grasshoppers don't bother the pawpaw trees at all, but this year, after they ate all of the cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, turnips, beets, onions, cabbage, broccoli, corn, pumpkins, luffa gourds, peppers, asparagus, potatoes, sweet potatoes, schwartzbeeren, morning glories, zinnias, sunflowers, sunchokes, fruit trees, and grass, they moved on to destroy every last one of my seedling pawpaws. They didn't stop at eating just the leaves either, they ate the bark too. They killed my oldest and largest pawpaw tree, plus every one of its babies that had suckered up from the root zone.
I used to have 14 pawpaw trees, but now I only have 3 left.
The grasshoppers also killed all but 4 of my 70 or so elderberry bushes. They stripped my apple trees bare, but interestingly, they left the peach trees and mulberry trees alone. I was just noting this morning how strange it looked to see such large, lush, green, leaves on the mulberry tree, while everything around it had been stripped bare.
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Post by macmex on Sept 1, 2023 11:38:11 GMT -6
Oh my! That's terrible! Here, just a few miles away, the grasshoppers left my paw paws alone. I have a bucket of seedlings, if you would like any, Ron. Just waiting for cool weather to transplant. I have more than I really need. The one seedling I got going two years ago is now about 4' tall and looking good. I believe all of mine are from seeds of your grafted varieties.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 1, 2023 11:44:52 GMT -6
Thanks, for the very generous offer George, but as heavy as the grasshopper load is this year, I think I'd better wait until I'm sure they're gone before I plant any more fruit trees. As many grasshoppers as I've seen laying eggs lately, it will take a small miracle of nature to thin them out next Spring. The last time we had them like this they lasted for two seasons before we got enough timely Spring rain to drown the hatchlings. I'm hoping next year we'll get our Spring rain on time. This year, from April through June, it was so dry out there that it looked like New Mexico.
This photo was taken June 4th, 2023. This photo was taken July 11th, 2023. Another tough year in the world of global warming and climate change.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 20, 2023 18:47:22 GMT -6
Pawpaws everywhere! Our family has been on a couple of different hikes recently, and there has been an understory tree with large leaves that I didn’t know. I wasn’t really investigating it until I was in a park on a trail in the woods with my youngest, and I happened to spot an old brown fruit on the ground. I stepped on it, and it mushed into a yellow pulp with large seeds. It looked to me like a pawpaw from the pictures on this thread. I didn’t see fruits on the trees in that area, but a bit further down the path I spotted one small one so got a photo of it and the leaves to bring home to compare. After reading back over a chunk of this thread, I was pretty sure that all those leaves on the understory trees had been pawpaws. My son and I went back to the park and did a smell test on the leaves. Yes, sure enough, they smelled like hot asphalt. My son and I went hiking on the same path, and amazing, he found the remains of the pawpaw I had stepped on. I had brought a glove and dug around and found four large seeds. As we continued to walk and I really knew what I was looking at, I did manage to spot trees that had some fruit, and I found more fruits dropped in the leaf litter off the sides of the trails. This week we went walking down in the woods behind my mom’s cow pasture. I hadn’t been far down there since we had moved back, but I did a good bit of string trimming on Saturday to clear out some brambles near what used to be the entry to a path. Then I mowed a type of path down further in to the woods. My son and I went down there [carefully avoiding some widow makers] and went to a little creek that sometimes runs there. It’s pretty dry right now, but as I was standing there looking at it, I looked down and what did I see but two tiny pawpaw seedlings. I looked up, but there was no large tree nearby. Just this morning, my son and I went on a bike ride, because he’s learning to ride without training wheel for his homeschooling PE class. We have a neighbor who has cleared a path on his property where he allows us to walk or bike, but the terrain is mostly too rough for a learner. He pushed his bike through it to the other side, though, where there is a gravel driveway where he can practice. As we were standing at the head of that, I looked over and saw pawpaw trees. These were large [for small trees], but I didn’t see any fruit on branches or on the ground. I’ve been very excited to have learned a new tree and to be able to spot it in the area.
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Post by macmex on Sept 21, 2023 12:03:35 GMT -6
You are blessed to be living in a part of the country where they can grow profusely! Here we have to coddle them to get them started but there, they are "normal." The other day we found our first ripe persimmon, and it was pretty large. Just have to find the tree as I didn't see anything directly above where we found the fruit.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 24, 2023 19:31:53 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum,
That is so cool! I've never seen a pawpaw growing in the wild before. The only pawpaws I've ever seen were from the trees that I've planted. Like George said, they are a blessing to have around. A person could make a meal of some of the larger fruits we've grown around here, but there are so few of them that a person would not live very long on pawpaws alone.
This has been a terrible year for growing things in general, but we do have heavily loaded persimmon trees at the edge of our woods. I saw 8 deer this evening, walking along the tree line, munching on early ripening persimmons.
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