North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

mIEKAL,
During our severe drought years of 2007 and 2008, I observed established
pawpaw patches on the top of rocky ridges in SW VA, which set and ripened
full crops for fruit.  They did not suffer premature fruit drop, during
conditions that hurt other fruit crops, and caused a number of springs to
dry up.  I mentioned this to a pawpaw researcher (forget now which one) and
they agreed that established pawpaws are surprisingly able to ripen fruit
well in a drought, relative to some other fruits.

Pawpaws don't have a huge amount of leaves (even leaf ?area?) compared to
other trees.  They also are clonal in wild patches, so have the potential
to share water through an extensive, connected root system.

Agreed that kiwi need more water than some other crops, but that could
possibly be managed by multiple summer prunings.

Richard Moyer
SW VA

From: mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [nafex] Paw paw for sale?
To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
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Pawpaws and kiwis seem to be the least drought tolerant.  Luckily I
have 300 feet of hose that I can drag out to the pawpaw patch and see
if I can keep the fruit set hanging on the tree.  I'm still trying to
figure out how I got so many fruit to set with only one tree flowering
this year.