Planting Five New Pawpaw Trees

For the last several years, our yard-based pawpaw orchard has been made up of five cultivars: a Wells, a Shenandoah, a KSU Atwood, and a Susquehanna. The oldest of these, the Wells, was planted in spring of 2011, so ten years old this May. We've gotten fruit from the Wells for the past six seasons, and all the others have chimed in bounteously, except for the Mango, which along with the Susquehanna is the youngest.

This spring of 2021, on March 5, we had five more pawpaw trees arrive: the Potomac, two Maria's Joy, a KSU Chappell, and a KSU Benson. Below, I'm including some pics of the yard, labeled to show the new pawpaws among the old pawpaws. All of them are from One Green World in Oregon, which is where we've always bought pawpaws from.

The Potomac, which is one of the Peterson pawpaws, was planted from a 5.5 inch banded pot.

The Maria's Joy was planted from a 5.5 inch banded pot.

KSU Chappell: 1 gallon pot
Maria's Joy: 5.5 inch banded pot
KSU Benson: 1 gallon pot

One Green World's info on all of the new cultivars above.

We've always planted pawpaws in May, and they've all grown well except one (which is no longer with us). This year, One Green World sent them at the very beginning of March. So...finger crossed!

 

Like a Prodigal Pawpaw Child

After an absence of ten months, here I come back to this blog, walking hangdog, a prodigal pawpaw child.

The world has changed since I last posted here about pawpaws. I got distracted from pawpaws by covid things, and working on a nonpawpaw-related book. Happily, that book is nearing completion.

But with all the distractions, and the discouragement that covid would stop our Utah Pawpaw Festival, some pawpaw-related things around here slid, and then genuinely collapsed. 

Consider the following:

1. I've felt shame that in spite of my past successes in getting pawpaw seeds to germinate, this year I only had one pawpaw seed germinate. And then it turned out that this germinating seed wasn't even a pawpaw--it was some English ivy! Maybe the germination rate was 0 because I used the same dirt as I used the previous year? This year, because of covid I didn't go out and buy any new dirt.

2. Of the 15 or so pawpaw seedlings that I had at the end of 2019, and that I put in the shed dormant to overwinter, only two survived. That's a higher rate of winter kill than I've ever had. So, I did a bad job. But to my credit, when an old pawpaw acquaintance of mine reached out and asked if I had any seedlings on hand, I gave him the two that survived.

3. Most of the fifteen or so pawpaw seedlings that we had in our strip of backyard (we have an almost nonexistent backyard, with more ample side yards) have wilted so that I doubt they'll recover and spring back to life in spring of 2021. It is and it isn't a lack of watering. Namely, it isn't a lack of watering because I indeed watered them quite often. But it is a lack of watering because I didn't water them as much as they evidently needed to be watered. My hope had been that they would start being self-sufficient after about three years in the ground, but even with their long taproots they didn't manage to become self-sufficient. It was an experiment and the pawpaws lost.

4. A few years ago, with our neighbors' permission, I planted three pawpaws on our next door neighbors' property, right at the margin between our house and their house, hoping these trees would become something of a natural fence. Those were the seedlings that for whatever reason were doing the best. But then one morning in summer 2020 I went out to water the seedlings and I saw that our neighbors' adult son, who hadn't been privy the agreement to have the pawpaws planted there, had pulled up two of the little trees like they were weeds. Indeed, he probably thought they were weeds. I didn't talk to him about it, of course. What was I going to say? "Hey, your dad said I could plant those trees there three years ago, when you weren't yet even an adult, and now, three years later, you've pulled them up because they still look like little weeds"?

5. And then oh! The annual Utah Pawpaw Fest! Cancelled because of covid. Of course, we could have it if we wanted to, and I was just on Instagram and saw that a pawpaw festival in the midwest just happened, covid masks and social distancing and all. But we're pretty conservative when it comes to social distancing. Or is it that we're pretty liberal when it comes to social distancing? What I mean is, we are cautious with this covid thing (and caution is usually a conservative virtue), which makes us, strangely, liberal. Still, conservative or liberal, it's rough to not hold the annual Utah Pawpaw Festival. It would have been the sixth annual this year. 

So, items 1 through 5 have afforded you your daily allotment of 2020 doom scrolling, with a pawpaw twist.

A few neutral to nice things about the state of our pawpaw household and larger neighborhood:

1. Last fall we gave some pawpaw seedlings to a friend in the neighborhood and I think they grew okay in her yard this summer. (Though her grapes grew very thick so it was often hard to see if the pawpaws were growing okay, through the grape-laden fence.)

2. Some other friends of ours in the neighborhood planted three pawpaw trees that they ordered from online. Last I heard, none of them had died, though a few of them didn't look super healthy.

3. Our big trees have given a lot of pawpaws this year. We're in the thick of things with the Shenandoah and Atwood. We're getting a few from the Susquehanna. The Wells is still holding tight to its fruit, late ripener that it is. And the Mango cultivar? It's grown taller than me. But it still hasn't given any fruit. And I've looked at its branches and can't find any of the tell tale small flower buds that would suggest it may flower and give fruit next year. Maybe they're there and I just don't see them because of the riotous leaves. November will tell.

4. Those of you who read this blog last year know that I lovingly catalogued every pawpaw that all of our trees produced. Individually weighing all six hundred pawpaws! And marking which fruit fell on which date! What was I thinking? This year, I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from that experience. My ocd can only carry me so far. So I haven't been able to bring myself to keep track of how many fruit fall from any of the trees. I can't bring myself to label them. I can't bring myself to write down the dates. And not to weigh them. Well, I did weigh two of them, as you'll see from the pics below.

5. Today I checked the email address I use for pawpaw purposes. I caught up on some pawpaw emails, responding to one enquirer a full seven months late. I should probably have included this item in the doom scrolling section of this post.

A couple other things: I caught covid in early July (I'm fine, just 5 days of mild symptoms), and I also discovered (very belatedly) Instagram. You can find my work in block printing, which sometimes features pawpaws: @brian.blockprinting

So here I am, easing back into this blog like the prodigal son-of-a-pawpaw-patch that I am.

 

our kitchen table today

weighing one of the big ones

weighing another big one

Pawpaw Harvest 2019

So...now that the dust has cleared, and pawpaw season is past, and the festival is over, many people are asking how many pawpaws we harvested from each tree in 2019.

Here's the answer.

Shenandoah:    111
Wells:               305
KSU-Atwood:  215
Susquehanna:      5

Total:                636             

Below, I'm including my handwritten tallies, by date, and including how much each one weighed. I thought I would put the weights into a spreadsheet and give you the average weight for each tree, but I've lost my will for now. In fact, after weighing 636 pawpaws, I've decided I likely won't ever weigh all the pawpaws that fall from our trees again. I'll only weigh the biggest.





Shenandoah

Wells

KSU Atwood

Susquehanna

Fifth Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival

On 27 Sept 2019 we held the Fifth Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival. Over a hundred people said they would be there and about a hundred were there at different times, among them three of our little nieces, one wearing pearls we gave her from the Lesser Sunda Islands, one wearing an Indonesian batik shirt, and the youngest, at two-and-a-half years old, bringing a choice saying: "I like the Norma and Pawpaw Carnival!"

We thought the end of September would provide a bountiful harvest to share but the spring was late this year, and whereas in years past most of the harvest was done by the end of September, this year we only had a bag full of pawpaws, as seen below. I put them in a bag hoping that would speed up the ripening process for the harder fruits.

We asked a handful of friends to make pawpaw gastronomical inventions using frozen pawpaw pulp we had kept from last year. Some of our friends made pawpaw shrub (which is a vinegar drink). Unfortunately they had a funeral in California to go to during the fest, so they left it with us to do the final mixing. I think we mixed it just fine. I say "unfortunately" because of the funeral. But what stalwart friends to get the pawpaw shrub prepared in spite of a funeral!

Here's the pawpaw shrub out on the table to the side of our own meager contribution, which was simply to take the last bag of pulp out of the freezer and thaw it to make sure that everyone got to taste a pawpaw in its natural state, given the small number of ripe pawpaws we had on hand. (By the way, next time we have a pawpaw fest, I think we'll call it "puree" rather than "pulp." No one complained about the term pulp but there's something about puree that might fit better with a fest.)

Here's the plate with all of the ripe pawpaws that were available for the fest, just 13. The scarcity sent me walking among the guests giving each person their specific ration of fresh pawpaw. But the Weber County bee inspector and his family made the hour and a half trip down for the fest, so I gave him a larger portion than the people from the neighborhood, who could have plenty of pawpaws after the fest, since this year we had many many pawpaws on the trees. (As I'll get to in another post, we had a harvest of over 640 pawpaws this year!)

Here were the pawpaws that we had on hand but that weren't ripe during the fest.
They stayed in the bag.

A few years ago, maybe six now, we planted a couple persimmon trees. They've never really taken off, and haven't given any persimmons. But this year at least one of them had enough leaves to harvest and make a persimmon leaf tea for the fest. Included in the pic is some honey made by bees in our own neighborhood.

Some other friends brought Paw2na Cotta, pronounced Pawpawna Cotta. When they brought it in, the tray was covered with little cups like this. I snapped this pic thirty seconds after they set it down. Had I waited another 30 seconds, the tray would have been bare.

Some other friends brought a Paw'kin Roll. One component of the roll (maybe the bread?) was made with pawpaws, and the other component of the roll (maybe the filling?) was made with pumpkin. Maybe it was exactly like that, except reversed. Definitely it was good stuff. About twenty kids were there, with their approximately eighty adult folks. As the crowd was polishing off the Paw'kin Roll at the end, I found myself the unwitting mediator among about five of the kids (a good quarter of the child attendants) as they were having a low-grade fight about who would get the last of it and how much of the last of it they would get.

The pawpaw shrub was a hit at the fest among the adults. One fest-goer event commented to me that she had never been a fan of vinegar based drinks but that the pawpaw shrub won her over. But the shrub wasn't such a hit with the children who attended. It was kind of funny--only the smallest bit funny--to see some of the children pour themselves some shrub thinking it was lemonade. They made faces that were kind of funny--only the smallest bit funny--when they tasted the vinegar based pawpaw drink.

Here's the Paw'kin Roll nearing its end.
This pic taken just a minute or so before the five children descended on the last of it.

During the fest, I showed some party goers the pawpaw seedlings growing from our 2018 seeds, planted in spring 2019. One party goer from the community, whom I met through this blog, left with the gift of two seedlings. And the Weber County bee inspector left with three seedlings. 

Here was the scene at the end of the fest. There were other scenes too. Like outside at our carport, where most of the fest took place. (Most of the food was available outside, but people came inside into the kitchen to get the dishes containing pawpaw.)

Here were some other outdoor scenes after the festival was over.

The next day I woke up bright and early and went rock climbing for the first time. This isn't me. This is one of the fest attendants who took me.

Eating Our First Susquehanna Pawpaw

A few years ago we planted a Susquehanna pawpaw cultivar. Faithful followers of this blog will know that this year was the first time it gave fruit. It gave fruit really quickly, since we just planted it in May 2016.

Here's a pic of the first bite of the first Susquehanna pawpaw back in September. It was a fine pawpaw, and we've heard it grows very big. In terms of texture, it was more jelly-like than we were accustomed to with either the Shenandoah or the Atwood or even the Wells. In fact, in the center, the jelly-like quality was very pronounced, to the point that around the seeds in some of them the flesh seemed genuinely gelatinous, so that rather than being opaque it was translucent. I don't know if that's been others' experience with the Susquehanna. Maybe it's the year. Maybe it's the climate. Maybe it's the year plus the climate plus the cultivar.

In Virginia one year I foraged a bushel of pawpaws and was surprised to find, when I cut the soft ones open, they were kind of like big gummy bears. I ate two or three gummy bear pawpaws every day until they were gone. Still, my preference was for the creamy and custardy pawpaws that I was more familiar with. The Susquehanna wasn't as much of a gummy bear pawpaw as the wild ones I found in Virginia, but there was a resemblance, enough to get me to recall eating those gummy bear pawpaws. I'm discussing this attribute of the Susquehanna without putting either a positive or negative spin on it, since for some people this could be a selling point and for some people, something to avoid. I do recommend that you take my description here into account in balance with the description of Neal Peterson, who developed the cultivar, and who is much more of an expert on pawpaws than I am. He says the Susquehanna is his favorite of them all. It's not my favorite, but the Shenandoah is, and that also was developed by Peterson. 

Expatriate Pawpaws: In Meiji Era Japan

Emperor Meiji, who reigned during the pawpaw's establishment in Japan.

Ideally this blog wouldn't just be about the expatriate pawpaws that life in our yard in Utah. It would also be about the expatriate pawpaws that live in many parts of the world, far from their home range. To this point, the expatriate pawpaws in our yard have been over-represented. That will probably remain how it is. But just for some respite, take a look at this article, which says that pawpaws have been living in Japan since they were brought there during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). You'll need to use a translation app: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20191003/k10012110761000.html

The Gathering In--For the Pawpaw Fest

The Fifth Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival is coming up soon--tomorrow, in fact. The branches of the pawpaw trees are heavy laden, as you can see.

And once in awhile we've had a pawpaw fall. I found this one in the grass several days ago, ripe and emitting a strong, delightful pawpaw smell. The roly-polies thought the same thing, and they ate holes in it--and one hole through it!--before I found it. (The roly-polies got one half, while we ate the other half.)

But in general, the pawpaws have been very slow to fall this year, we can only speculate because of the late spring we had here in Utah Valley.

So we've been picking some pawpaws from the trees--only the soft ones--in prep for the Pawpaw Fest. 

The number of ripe POH (pawpaws on hand) swelled from zero to eight by the end of Sept 24th. I think today we might be at thirteen. I'm hoping by the end of the day we'll be at fifteen. Heck, I'm hoping that by the end of the day we'll be at thirty or forty. But fifteen is more realistic. We're doing all we can--which isn't much--to hurry things along.