Planting Nine Pawpaw Trees

In September 2015 we had our first pawpaw harvest, from the Wells, which was pollinated either by the KSU-Atwood or the Shenandoah. That year, we harvested four pawpaw fruits and stratified the seeds, keeping them in the fridge over the winter so they would be viable for planting in the spring. There were twenty seeds, and on March 5th, 2016, I planted them all in containers. Most of them germinated. I gave a few away in 2017, for a total of four given away. I also killed one--not maliciously but in a spirit of experimentation. That brings us to July 28, 2018, with nine of them left.

I had been looking at them the past few days thinking they didn't look so healthy, knowing that they probably weren't feeling so healthy either, since they were getting big enough that their small containers and the same soil for the past few years wouldn't be pleasing to them.

So yesterday I decided to plant a few of them, and then once I started planting I just didn't stop. I planted all nine pawpaws of the 2015 harvest (2016 germination year). This brings our pawpaw orchard up to fourteen pawpaw trees, if you can imagine. Though the orchard may shrink if some of them can't hack it Utah's earth, or at least the subsection of Utah's earth that makes up the woodsy margin between our house and our neighbors' house.

The area I planted them is pretty shady, lined with red cedars and covered with ivy. I'm anticipating that if the pawpaws live, they won't grow in the conical-shaped way they do out on our lawn but rather they'll be spindly, like the pawpaws in Virginia that we used to see growing in the woods--spindly because they'll be reaching for sunlight. But don't cry for them. They're an "understory tree" by nature--planting them in the shade is like throwing Brer Rabbit into the brier patch.

I got into the ivy and pulled some of it up to prepare a place for the first couple seedlings.

Clearing the ivy, one of the first things I noticed was a pawpaw seed, one of the many that I have thrown back among the ivy in hopes that pawpaws would sprout spontaneously without further aid from me. But there it lies, thrown there in the fall of 2017 and clearly dried out an unviable. 

It so happened that the pawpaw whose container I had labeled A1 was the biggest at the time of planting yesterday, and I started with the biggest. But what a thing--to have A1 be the biggest of them all. Does it say anything about the way plants are responsive to their names? (I'll get back to you on that question later--I need to consult my crystals for a definitive answer.)

Then I moved on to planting the next one. I was curious, while using scissors to cut open the plastic containers. What would the pawpaw seedlings' infamous taproots look like? What contortions would they make while confined to such small containers? I had a good view of it all while planting the second seedling.

Moving on to planting another one. Mostly I wanted to include this pic because--look!--in the soil to the left of the pawpaw container you can see another dried-out pawpaw seed. Under the ivy, as I dug around, the ground was teeming with seeds that never grew.

(Other than that, excavating in the ivy was something of an archaeology of our son W's childhood. I found a broken arrow, a faded fruit snack wrapper, several dry-rotting sticks he used to play with, some fabric of uncertain origin, and a few other items.)

In went C5--good old C5!

In went C2--who could forget treasured days watering C2!

Since I planted these seeds in clear containers, the soil received a fair bit of light on a regular basis. I've been vaguely aware that some of the columns of soil were looking rather mossy. Now that I was cutting them open, I was curious to get a better look at the moss.

Look at that moss! We don't get that around here very much since the air is so dry. But this pawpaw must've felt right at home in mossy soil, like its ancestors might have experienced in the East. (I'm just kiddn--I don't think the pawpaw liked its soil conditions, wet and soggy and mossy and sunny. I think that's why the seedlings weren't looking so healthy lately. But in the end, I'm just trying to get by with "good enough.")

Another pawpaw seed! (I don't know why I was so excited to find these dead seeds. I put them there--or hurled them there--after all, so I shouldn't have been surprised they were...there.)

Another pawpaw seed.

A mossy taproot. Interesting to think that this taproot was exposed to the sun through the clear plastic.

Now here was a specimen with some fibrous moss!

Specimen C1 won the prize for most extensive moss jungle.

This pic puts the moss in the foreground. And puts the space alien--stop kidding yourself, I know you see the eye and terrifying slit of a nose!--in the background. It would be too much of a distraction, though, to mention the unexpected way in which the planting of these nine pawpaw seedlings ended up being a close encounter of the third kind, so I won't dwell on that here. Rather, I'll save that for my blog dedicated to aliens.

I got them all planted, finally, after sweating it out for a couple hours. Here are the containers of the seeds that din't make it--either never germinated or I killed or died over the winter: D7, D6, D1, C3, D10, A2. (Sadly, it looks like A2 just couldn't take living--or not living--in the shadow of its over-achiever and aptly named sibling A1.)

Here's the plastic-lined box I used to keep the seedlings in, brown with repeated spills during watering.

Here's a map of which pawpaw seedlings I planted, and where. The concentric circles represent the cedars. The cross-hatched area represents some brick hardscaping.

D3, D2, C1

D8, C4

C2, A1

C5

Finally, the last and certainly the least (as in smallest), D5.