Pawpaws in the Christmas Snow

Not much snow had fallen in our part of Utah until Christmas day, when we woke up to a good six to eight inches. We've been staying inside with colds (not hiking in southern Utah and not tending to the pawpaws), and a few days ago NJ and I spent some time water-coloring. Here's a painting I started (but haven't yet completed), of an arroyo we've gone to sometimes. This is from a photo we took a few autumns ago.

But onward to the pawpaws in the Christmas snow. If I had taken the pictures on Christmas day, there would be picturesque snow hanging from the boughs. But since I waited until today, the pawpaws aren't so picturesque, and the main aesthetic experience offered by some of these pics may involve admiring the sublime and snowy mountains in the background. (And unfortunately, for some viewers, that aesthetic experience may be mixed with envy.)

The Wells cultivar

The Susquehanna cultivar in its snow-laden cage

Left to right: The KSU-Atwood, the Shenandoah, and the Mango in its screened-in cage

Close-up of the Mango, which (true to One Green World's claims) grew quite quickly over the summer, much faster than the Susquehanna.

After looking at the pawpaws out in the snow, I started wondering about the pawpaws that had come in from the cold. So I walked around to the shed and took a look. The soil seemed a little hard, hopefully not too freeze dried, as if they needed some water. (You can see some mineralization on the top of the soil of a couple of the pawpaws--I thought it was frost until I touched it.)

So I took the seedlings outside and gave them each a clump of snow, for now, making a mental note to give them water occasionally in the future.

Then I put them back in the shed where the snow will slowly melt.

Pawpaw Seeds on the Christmas Tree?

One year ago today, I wrote a post detailing (among other things) how when we lived in Virginia I made some strings of pawpaw seeds. Today it was time to put the three strings of pawpaw seeds on the Christmas tree.

For most of the year the pawpaw seeds are draped over an item of furniture that we have.

But this evening it was time to move them to their Christmas location. Here I am removing the first string as ceremoniously as possible.

All this moot genetic material joining the more regular trimmings of the Christmas tree.

Retrieving the second string of pawpaw seeds (me, forground), and wearing a trucker hat in a completely un-ironic way (S, background).

One of the seeds fell off as I took the string down from its usual perch. After it fell off, I held it out in my hand like this, and NJ kept trying to take it from me and I kept not letting her take it; finally we came to a mutual understanding that I wasn't trying to give it to her, I was trying to get her to take a picture of me holding the lost seed so that you (gentle blog readers) could see that a seed fell off the string. Don't feel bad though, since it was just a very small moment of domestic strife (more likely, 100 notches below the level of strife) that we endured so that you could see the lost seed.

Placing the second string on the tree...

...among the Christmastime phantasmagoria.

All this moving of pawpaw strings had been a lot of work already and was making me tired, but I put my shoulder to the wheel once again to move the final string to the tree.

There...just...perfect.

Thanksgiving and Winterizing Pawpaw Seedlings

They say that pawpaws can withstand winter temperatures as low at negative 30 degrees F, and I know that there are some pawpaws that grow in Canada. But I imagine the negative 30 degrees figure may be for pawpaw trees that are well-established already. And for pawpaw trees that are growing in the ground, a relatively warm place where their well-established and extensive roots can provide a winter home for the pawpaw life-force. But of course, our pawpaw seedlings aren't well-established, and they aren't planted in the ground but are rather planted in cut-off water bottles. So when it snowed and stuck on Thanksgiving, I started thinking maybe I should take some action to preserve them over the winter. 

But what to do? If I were to bring them inside our house and warm them to a toasty 68 degrees F, they might get fooled and think that spring has already sprung.

They've just shed the last of their leaves, that that would be cruel to get them going all over again, and at the wrong time of year. (Maybe I overestimate a pawpaw seedling's naivete--maybe it's very hard to fool them, I don't know.)

The other alternative that I could think of was to put them in the shed. The shed has a drawback-- namely, they'll be in the dark for about three months, and I think pawpaws (and plants in general) perceive daylight hours and set their spring clocks by those, so the perpetual darkness of the shed could throw them off. But the shed is nice in another way: it's not too warm and it's not too cold, kind of goldilocksy.

So they're in the shed for right now, as of Thanksgiving. But I'm going to email the people at Kentucky State University and ask what they think is best in the circumstances. Once I hear back, I'll update this post on winterizing pawpaw seedlings.

Preparing Pawpaw Seeds for Planting

While we ate the eighty or so pawpaws, we kept nearly all of the seeds in a plastic container. I originally was putting them in layers separated by paper towels. But then W bumped the container and the layers got all shuffled. So we just threw all the seeds into the container.

A few weeks ago it was time to get them organized and get them ready to be stratified in the fridge over the winter so they'll be ready to be planted in the spring. If you're interested, here's another post where I talk about the pawpaw seed's over-wintering requirements.

Because I was getting them organized, and because not everyone does such a good job as I do of cleaning the pulp off of their pawpaw seeds, I decided I would wash the seeds in a strainer.

Once they were washed, I made layers of paper towels and pawpaw seeds in the plastic container. I got the paper towels a bit wet, since the seeds aren't supposed to dry out over the winter. (I'll just mention that I've seen people online talking about needing to pack the seeds in anti-fungal moss over the winter, but I found paper towels worked fine last winter.)

Like a contact lens, this is some of the residual pulpy film from the seeds, left by people (no offense) who aren't so conscientious as me in cleaning their pawpaw seeds.

Some people say that our beings are like onions--no cores, just layer upon layer down to nothing. I'm looking forward to when we stop privileging the onion as a plant-matter hieroglyph of our souls. Hopefully the pawpaw, after a century more of selective breeding, will afford us with an adequate metaphor for our future cyborg selves. It may well have to do with the layers and layers of stratifying seeds.

Oh the strata!

And oh the scummy pulp left in the kitchen sink!

The uppermost stratum.

Even with all my effort, some of the pulp stowed away on the seeds.

The seeds when into the fridge.

And this is about what they'll look like a year from now.