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  • From: Jay Cutts <orders@cuttsreviews.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Pawpaw question and observation
  • Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:31:48 -0600

I'm in NM at about 5000 feet. I've been trying to get pawpaws established for about 10 years. I buy grafted named varieties bare root and plant them in the ground. All but one have died after a year or maybe two. Our sun is very intense. The trees have been planted in an area that gets partial shade but I also used to put a shaded structure around them that kept them pretty much shaded all the time. I had some trees that did ok for a few years that way but when I removed the shading, they declined. Many times the trees were simply dead in the spring for no apparent reason.

I noticed that some trees that had survived the winter then put out a few leaves (these were usually small plants and often had only 4 or 5 leaves) and within a few weeks the leaves were chewed up, burnt out, or shredded by the wind. For the one tree that has survived, I put a mesh enclosure around it to keep off insects, birds, and wind. This year it put out a dozen or so leaves and is doing ok.

They definitely require acidifying the soil here. Without that, the leaves are cholorotic. Once I acidify, the change in leaf color is very rapid.

I've always puzzled over why I couldn't get the pawpaws to survive. Maybe the graft is the key and I need to plant seedlings.

Regards,

Jay

Jay Cutts
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On 8/19/2015 7:44 AM, Jerry Lehman wrote:
On 8/19/2015 8:56 AM, Louis Pittman wrote:
My experience has been similar to mIEKAL's - container-grown pawpaws that I
grafted and transplanted a year or so later, often grew for a year or two,
then the graft 'woke up dead' after winter, and the understock re-grew.
Now... in-groung established seedlings that were topworked to named
selections... no decline or death of the grafted variety.

But, again, it may be that if I did more than chunk 'em in the ground and
walk away, they might have fared better.
Lucky,

Thanks for your input, I would like to hear if others have had the same experience. It is quite common for a grafted tree to abort the graft the year of planting if it comes under stress. I've not heard reports of this following survival of the 1st year. This may be problematic with pawpaws and may be involved with the pawpaws dislike for being transplanted.

In thinking about personal experience. I've only planted 3 grafted potted pawpaws and none of them survived the past 2 years. One that did survive after the graft failed died the 3rd year. But my experience with only 3 instances isn't enough to draw a conclusion. I believe it was partially my fault as I may not have cared for them sufficiently. We need to hear from more planters of grafted potted pawpaws.

About 5 years ago I planted 33 pawpaw seedlings from the IDNR nursery. I also have a wild population and took the tractor back and brought in dirt from those root systems in an attempt to bring in the Mycorrhizae fungi specific to a Asimina and back filled the holes of every other one with this soil. I do have a water wagon that I can hall 200 gallons at a time and spray onto the ground, simulating rain. I had also applied pelletized sulfur to the ground and tilled in before planting. They were planted in well dug holes, not chunked in. (Lucky, not trying to put your method down as it's difficult not to do much else when planting potted pawpaws.) After planting when active growth had begun which is when I normally graft trees I grafted all of them using the Omega or saddle graft. Of the 33, none of the grafts survived past the 1st year and only 3 of the under stock survived. It's hell a be a total failure, and after all that work of planting those 33!

Jerry




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