Pawpaw Volunteers and Windfalls

As you know, we've got about twenty pawpaw seedlings growing in our meager backyard. I was out watering them about a week ago and realized that I was seeing a new pawpaw tree, one I hadn't planted. In this pic you can see the pawpaw plant on the right with its characteristic big leaves. And then on the left you can see the new pawpaw plant, much smaller. 

Here it is. Since I didn't plant it, it must be a volunteer that the roots of the bigger pawpaw sent out. I put the bigger pawpaw in the ground in 2018, as a seedling germinated from our first pawpaw harvest in 2015. I of course knew that pawpaw roots sent out volunteers (the origin of the proverbial pawpaw patch), but I didn't know they would send out volunteers so soon and when the originary tree was still so small. But, well, the pawpaw surprised me.

We've had a lot of fruit set and grow over the spring and summer. At first I didn't know how the trees would bring all of the fruits to fruition, but as I mentioned earlier, the tree will decide how much fruit it can bare. And the trees have decided to cast plenty of their fruit early. These are the last four early-cast fruits, cast sometime during the past weekend. How do I know they're the last four? Because yesterday, September 5th, NJ found the first ripe pawpaw on the ground. Let the 2019 harvest begin! 

Planting Nine Pawpaws, 4th of July 2019

 In 2018, you may remember, I planted nine pawpaw seedlings that were grown from seeds saved from the 2015 harvest (and germinated in the spring of 2016).

Over the winter, one of them died but the rest came back to life and most have seemed fairly healthy.

On the 4th of July 2019, I decided to plant nine more, the healthiest of the batch of seeds saved from the 2016 harvest (and germinated in the spring of 2017).

In the diagram below, you'll see the placement of the original nine in 2018 (these are named D2 and C4 etc) together with the placement of the 2019 planting, with the seedlings simply represented as circles with sunbursts around them.

As always, click on the pic for a better view.

The seedlings I put in the ground in 2018 are surviving but I'm not sure they're thriving, since they look just about like the seedlings I put in the ground in 2019.

In any case, my goal is for the trees to grow and become a natural fence between our back walkway and our neighbors' side walkway.

Well, and I guess I have another goal in planting these: to gain extreme fame and fortune by discovering and naming a new pawpaw cultivar. But that's much much less likely than it is that I'll achieve the humbler goal of having the seventeen pawpaws grow into a fence.

It so happens that while I was planting the seedlings, our neighbor walked by and I asked him if I could plant three pawpaws on his side of the railroad tie, so we could have more of a barrier. He was fine with that, so here they are, planted.

And just for opulenence's sake, I thought I'd through in a pic of our cactus, which is blooming today.

The Tree Will Decide

We've got three pawpaw trees online (that is, three pawpaw trees that have been giving fruit): the Shenandoah, the KSU-Atwood, and the Wells. And then one more is coming online this year, probably, since our three-year-old (three years since planting the grafted cultivar) Susquehanna currently has four pawpaw fruits on it.

This year, as far as I can tell, we've had a record fruit set, and I think the harvest will be the biggest ever in September. But on our way to September, the trees are deciding how much fruit they can sustain, and the Shenandoah has dropped a lot of the fruit that set in the spring. In early July, fruit was dropping quick. And on July 8th I gathered a bunch of the prematurely dropped fruit from off the lawn.

I put the premature fruit on the pavement to take a pic. I wonder how many of each types of pawpaw we'll get this year. I still think it will be a record year. But. The trees will decide.

Stereotypical Pawpaw Blossom Post

Just checking in, wanted to show you the pawpaw blossoms, which are already finish and on to fruiting time. If you've there's an ant in the final pic.

First Fruits of the Susquehanna Pawpaw Tree

Back in May 2016 we planted two new pawpaws: the mango and Susquehanna cultivars. Now, three years later, the mango hasn't had any flower buds, but the Susquehanna had its first buds this spring. And then it set some fruit. As of now, there are are seven pawpaw fruits on this little pawpaw tree. I doubt the tree will be able to sustain all of these, and it's typical that the trees drop the fruit they can't sustain. So it will be interesting to see if this little tree can keep any of the fruit. 

If the Susquehanna can bring just one fruit to fruition, it will have beaten the KSU-Atwood and Shenandoah, which took 4 years to bear fruit. And the Wells took five years. So this would be great. They say the Susquehanna gives some very heavy fruit. Over a pound, which (I hyperbolize) is heavier than the little tree itself!

Winter to Spring, Cactus to Pawpaw

Over the winter we went to Robert Smithson's earth- and water-work Spiral Jetty a couple times. It's up on the north part of the Great Salt Lake. After we got back from one of the trips, I made a linocut based on the brine shrimp and red algae and salt crystals near the Spiral Jetty.  If you've never heard of this piece of artwork that is far from the pawpaw's range, you should read up on it.

That was winter. Then spring came along and it was time to get this big cactus out of our house, so we needed to find a big landscaping dolly. Tougher than it sounds, for us anyway.

Last year we kept the cactus under the arches in front of our house, but that was because it was getting used to not being a strictly indoor cactus anymore. This year, we want it to take the full brunt of the sun. No more shade and shadows, no matter how aesthetic that may be.

So I used the dolly to move it out into the yard to be a good neighbor to the Wells cultivar.

Strange Beast, and Tanager in a Pawpaw Tree

The other day at a second hand store we found this strange beast. Who makes a bear (complete with killed fish at its feet) out of a cowrie shell and a clam shell? I sure would like to know who, since it's some creative thinking.

Also the other day NJ and I were standing out by the car port and talking before I was going in to work, and then a western tanager flew up and landed in the Shenandoah. I couldn't get any picks before it flew away, so I was lucky that a few days later it landed in the same tree and stuck around for long enough.

If you want to see one of the few western tanagers to have ever landed in a pawpaw tree, you should click on this pic.

But if you just want to see what a male western tanager looks like, here's a pic I lifted from wikipedia.