Native, in your experience, do bareroot trees grow faster than potted trees once planted? I'm in central ky and have some clay I'm dealing with. It's taking a couple years for my bare roots to get going but they're making it.
It depends on the pots. This is not specific to pawpaw, but bare root trees have their tap root and other roots pruned as part of the extraction process. They often cut back the tops of bare root trees to balance them. The saying with bare root trees is year 1, sleep, year 2, creep, and year 3 leap. B&B trees are a bit better as there is generally a larger root ball extracted, but transportation cost pretty much preclude anything beyond local.
Trees grown in smooth pots kind of depend on how fast growing the tree is and how large the pot is. If you transplant them before the tap root begins to circle or j-hook they will grow faster than bare root trees. If the roots circle or j-hook they tree can do real well for quite a few years and then the roots constrict themselves as they grow and you have issues. The problem is that you don't know until you unpot them and disturb the roots. If they circle or j-hook it is best to prune them by hand, but with all that disturbance, they act more like bare root trees.
Trees grown in a root pruning container system don't have those issues. They have no tap root because roots have been pruned at each stage causing up stream branching. The grow faster while in the containers because energy isn't wasted. Roots are pruned as the hit the container openings. Energy is then directed at a combination of upstream branching and top growth. Unlike bare root trees which must be transplanted when dormant, you can transplant one of these trees in the dead of summer if you provide supplemental water as needed. They just continue growing as the stress from transplant is minimal.
I've noticed that my trees grown in rootmakers do slow down after transplanting. That is largely due to the difference in soil fertility between my native clay soil and the fertilized medium I use in containers. Keep in mind that I'm working at volume, so once a tree makes it to the field, it gets almost no care.
Time will tell how pawpaws will do grown this way. Mine were all seed grown. Most of the seeds came from some of Lehman's controlled crosses but some came from KSU and others. I like the idea of genetic varieties. While I do plan to eat some, the primary purpose is wildlife.
Thanks,
Jack
