Updates from a Utah Pawpaw Orchard

There are several people who grow pawpaws in Utah and who have pawpaw orchards that are about the size of ours. (Scroll down to the comments section of this 2015 blog post to hear from some of the pawpaw growers of Utah.)

This is a report on our particular orchard (consisting of three fruit-bearing trees, two pre-fruiting trees, thirteen seedlings, and forty planted seeds, some of which have already germinated).

On the fruiting trees: A little while ago I told you that the Shenandoah (five years old) is carrying about 65 pawpaw fruits this year. I thought I was reporting this figure after it had already dropped the fruit it wasn't going to carry. But I was wrong. We've had some high winds and a week or so ago it dropped six pawpaws, taking the total down to 59 fruits.

Here are the pawpaws, thrown before their time, cradled in W's hand. I'm not posting the pic with his face because he's smiling while holding them, which doesn't show the proper decorum.

And then yesterday we also had some high winds and we lost twelve more fruits from the same tree, taking us down to about 47 fruits on the Shenandoah.

These windfall pawpaws are next to the forty seeds we planted in March 2017, seven of which have germinated and many more of which will germinate in the coming month. 

As for the pre-fruiting trees: you'll recall that last month I reported that a deer had munched the top off of the Mango cultivar. The pawpaw tree knew what happened and knew what to do once its terminal leaf bud was removed. It chose another leaf bud to be terminal and has kept on growing up. And then you'll see right about in the middle of the pic there's a leaf that was half eaten and so the pawpaw activated a previously dormant leaf bud and turned it into two small leaves. They say "broccoli has an IQ of 10"--I think the pawpaw is even smarter, with an IQ of maybe 15. (Oops--sorry about that misplace link on the "IQ of 10" bit; here's the actual link on broccoli.) 

On Saturday we didn't just sit around the yard pining for the pawpaws to ripen in September. We drove over to the High Uintas and hiked to some high mountain lakes and fished. Here's a boulder field, immediately above one of the lakes, still with snow covering a lot of it.

Once we got off the road and started hiking, we didn't see anyone all day long (we went to lakes that don't have trails to them). But as I walked through the boulder field, I found a little egg abandoned amid the granite and lichen.