yoderjac
5 year old buck +
so i got some paw paw seeds and they are just now starting to germinate. Everything I have read says that they prefer shade their first year but then prefer more sun. I read that young seedlings can actually die if they are planted in full sun.
I've got two options:
1) I could keep them at the house in 5 gallon root trapper bags and keep them shaded then plant them next spring
or
2) I could plant the seedlings this fall in tree tubes and maybe the tree tubes would provide enough shade then when they pop out of the tree tubes they could handle the sun??
opinions??
thanks
todd
What zones R Paw Paw Good For?
Todd, you know when you use that word "expert" it means someone who lives more than 50 miles from you and has a connection to the Internet.(INTERNAL IMAGE LIKE EMOTICON REMOVED)
I've not grown them from seed but have dug many small seedlings up in the woods and transplanted them.
Yes, they need sun protection for at least a year and sometimes two years. I don't use tree tubes, but it seems that this would provide good protection.
If I cage them (which I sometimes do) I will duct tape a garbage bag over the cage to provide mid day sun protection. They need some sun, so you don't want extreme shade. When they get growing good, just rip the tape and bag off the top of the cage. If I don't cage them, I just use some kind of makeshift shading from whatever is laying around. If you are lucky enough to have some poke weeds sprout up by them, that is good shade.(INTERNAL IMAGE LIKE EMOTICON REMOVED)
Good luck with your paw paws and hopefully a real expert will chime in.
I have no experience growing paw paw but I have looked into them. We have them growing wild in our area in general but I have not seen any on my property.
I once had access to a property that was previously owned by a company whose execs were also PETA folks. The place had more issues with deer than you could imagine. You could see 200+ yards through the hardwoods with nothing green below about 6' because of the browse line. There was one exception...paw paw. These starving deer would not touch the leaves.
Of course, the fruit was consumed immediately.
I mostly find paw paw in the understory of hardwoods, so the shading of young trees makes sense. I also seem to find it in flood plain areas.
That is about the limit of my knowledge on paw paw.
Thanks,
Jack
One thing I have learned about paw paw from observing young ones - if you see one that appears to be dying, do give up on it just yet.
There is a wild one at the edge of my yard (I didn't plant it) that has died and come back from the roots three times. Its starting to become a big tree now and I think its out of the danger zone.
Sadly, one of the grafted trees that I've had growing for 5 years has started doing the same thing. It has numerous shoots coming back from the roots now, but below the graft - so if it lives, it could be good or bad.
Here is one of the better ones, and I have a few more that look this good.
mine all grow in the timber but don't have that many leaves.They do produce fruit.
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Originally Posted by buckdeer1
mine all grow in the timber but don't have that many leaves.They do produce fruit.
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Yes, they amaze me at how well they do in an understory. They will fruit better in full sun, but do extremely well with quite a bit of shade.
I agree with yoderj. I have mostly seen them in understory of hardwoods and in floodplains. I dug up some 4-5 footers and planted them in full sun. They did well for awhile but as spring turned to summer they died. I think shade for the first year is a must. I think I'll try it again only this time I'll plant them in the understory of hardwoods. Good luck!
...you'll find good pawpaw on benches of N to NW facing steep slopes....he likes dark dank places and some depth to the soil but maybe some filtered PM sun....kinda like an old root cellar environment....kinda musty...if you've got a place where shrooms produce reliably, then that would be a good spot for one.....in W OK morel will sometimes grow real well under shade of ERC in eroded ravines...but not sure how well pawpaw will do with ERC...but I can tell you the fungal presence is big benefit to pawpaw longevity. If you put him in a field...that is a bacterial soil....he won't do as well as in the forest. His trunk isn't real strong so he needs to be an understory tree where wind speed is lower and solar heat less intense.
I had a bunch of paw paw seeds earlier this year and threw them out. Nothing about them really appeals to me. There's far too many other trees that rank higher on this list for deer if diversity is what you're looking for.
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...you'll find good pawpaw on benches of N to NW facing steep slopes....he likes dark dank places and some depth to the soil but maybe some filtered PM sun....kinda like an old root cellar environment....kinda musty...if you've got a place where shrooms produce reliably, then that would be a good spot for one.....in W OK morel will sometimes grow real well under shade of ERC in eroded ravines...but not sure how well pawpaw will do with ERC...but I can tell you the fungal presence is big benefit to pawpaw longevity. If you put him in a field...that is a bacterial soil....he won't do as well as in the forest. His trunk isn't real strong so he needs to be an understory tree where wind speed is lower and solar heat less intense.
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Interesting... I just discovered my paw paws this weekend (I've lived on the place for almost 2 years and have worked hard to make a list of all of my tree species, but didn't see this guy until Saturday) but it is at the very top of a NNW facing slope in pretty heavy oak shade. I did some small scale TSI and hinge cutting up there this winter that lets in some light from the South and SE (during the spring in particular) and now this tree is blowing up.
But based on location alone it would be almost completely protected from the hottest part of the afternoon summer sun, and the winds from our nasty (and awesome) Kansas thunderstorms.
I'll have to keep this in mind when I plant a few more this fall.
All I know is that I have them along a stream on my place and where shaded most of the time - once we did a timber cut the additional light caused an explosion of fruit. The coons wiped them out before a single one hit the ground. I have never grown them on purpose. They seem to like a broken malance of sun and shade and ample water being available as well. Other then the fruit I have seen no wildlife value to them.