Paw paw and persimmons

b116757

5 year old buck +
Well I ordered 50 paw paws and 50 persimmon seedlings. My question is do either of these need grow tube protection? I’m almost positive I read an article that deer wouldn’t browse paw paw trees and I don’t know that I’ve seen them bother young persimmons either.
 
With the cost of persimmons I don’t think I would risk it. I’m putting in my first bunch of them this spring, my plan is to just fence them all in small groups. That has worked for me pretty good with white pines and plums and fencing cost isn’t bad. I will plant in groups of 4-6.

I don’t have any experience with paw-paw except the ones that are native in our woods. Those all seem to thrive with wetter feet and in shade. I don’t know about anything browsing on them but the fruit lasts about two seconds when it hits the ground everything eats them.
 
Interesting about the paw paw. When do they ripen? i too ordered some persimmono. The ones I ordered are supposed to ripen in November
 
They start dropping late summer here.
 
The deer don't smiff my paw paws planted in 2015 had their first fruit this summer and caged) but I planted 100 persimmon seedlings from the MDC in 2009 and they were all dead in a year's time. I put short mesh tubes on them and that didn't stop coons and deer from getting after them. I planted 2 year old persimmons from Stark brothers in 15 and they are producing persimmons now. I ate my first one a week ago. Incredible taste. They were tubed now just caged.
 
I’m planning on tubing them all in my spring planting but I did consider dropping a few here and there around the farm unprotected. I still may try a couple unprotected pawpaw trees I’ve read they have a natural insect repellent in the leaves that deer find unpalatable. So it maybe a nice low maintenance tree to work into different areas.
 
I think the only reason a paw paw may need protected is for buck rubs. I watch the deer out my window eating clover and chicory amongst the paw paws and they don't even go near them. The elderberry are a different story.
 
I am also in Upstate NY, I planted a few Paw Paw's from Mehrabyan Nursery in Ithaca NY 2 years ago. I bought from there because I had a tough time getting reassurance that they will grow in our colder hardiness zone here in NY. Mine didn't do very well the first year, they did grow a few inches but failed to green up this spring. That doesn't mean you will have the same experience so don't let that deter you. Paw Paw's are an understory tree that can't handle full sun is about all I can tell you from my research. I would cage them as opposed to tubes if I had to do it again.
I caged my Persimmon so I can't attest to whether deer hammer them or not bud.

 
I have had trouble with bare root paw paws from several different sources. The more I read up on paw paws I saw that bare root seedlings do not have the best survival rates. I grew some from seed and bought a wells paw paw that was potted from Stark Bros. They are all doing very well. I have them caged, but have no signs of deer browsing them. My persimmons are caged and they are still getting browsed.
 
I cleared a 1/8 mile thru heavy timber for a new fence line I’m putting in. I was planning on planting the pawpaws in that area along the timber line. They should get about half days sun.
 
I like tubing persimmons if for no other reason that it helps me identify where they are if I'm brush cutting around them. I have noticed some browsing of persimmon leaves. I only planted a single (free) bareroot pawpaw tree 3 or 4 years ago. It's not much bigger than the day I planted it, but nothing has browsed it. They take a long time to get established, but don't let my limited experience deter you.
 
Pawpaws are everywhere throughout the understory here. I never see any evidence of browsing - and I recall reading about areas in the Northeast, where the deer population is out of control... pawpaws are the only thing left in the understory. However, I'm convinced that there's nothing a buck prefers to rub above a young pawpaw tree out in the open!
Those understory pawpaws will sucker and spread until they finally push a stem out into the open where it can get sunlight, but those in the shade will only bear very sparingly, if at all.
A pawpaw in full sun will be most productive - but small seedlings may need shade/tubing for the first 2-3 years, until they get a good root system established.
I've 'imprisoned' pawpaw seedlings in 20 oz. styrofoam cups for 2-3 yrs before outplanting - whacking off circling roots from the bottom of the cup, and cutting off any that managed to exit the drainage holes, yearly ... and outplanted them in full sun with no shade... and they did fine, 'cause they had a well-developed lateralized root system when they went in the ground.

I'm not sure that deer will eat pawpaw fruit... Raccoons/opossums will take an occasional pawpaw, but mostly, they'll lie there on the ground and rot, here, unless I pick them up. Pigs won't touch them... which makes me wonder if we need to be eating them. Most folks fall into two camps - they either find them delicious (at least initially), or they find them so disgusting that they don't want to try a second one. I used to like them, but anymore, I can eat one, and I don't care if I have another one until next year.
 
Interesting about eating the paw paw, which makes sense because I have never heard of anyone really eating them. What about the persimmon? Do deer eat them? I hope! I ordered a couple.
 
Persimmons... oh, yeah... they love 'em.
 
Deer will eat pawpaw, but usually coons and possums are the first ones there. I'd say there's typically more preferential browse at the time that pawpaws ripen. They have a short shelf life and bruise easily, which is why they aren't commercially available. Make no mistake, they are edible to people and many people do eat them. KSU has done a lot of work with raising, breeding and trying to find alternative markets.

I've been to a pawpaw taste testing put on by the county ag extension office. There are a lot of different cultivars. They mostly taste relatively similar to me, but there are some differences with respect to seed-to-pulp ratio, growth habits, fruiting characteristics, etc. Pawpaws have a strange texture with a taste that has variations of banana, mango, and something else I can't put my finger on. I can see what Lucky_P is saying with them though. It's not something I would overindulge. It's not necessarily the taste, but after a bit of it I was like...OK I'm good. I tried ice cream/custard and jam made from pawpaws, which was quite good. I took some seeds from pawpaws I tried and put it in the fridge for months. Never checked to see if they grew last year after planting them though.

Leaves aren't browsed, because there's a chemical in the leaves (the name escapes me at the moment). The tree is relatively pest free, but swallowtail butterflies do eat and lay eggs on the leaves. They don't do too much damage though. Flowers are pollinated by flies typically, which can be a bit less reliable so plant them fairly close together. I imagine deer might rub the bark, because they seem to prefer rubbing trees with bark that is scented.
 
I've eaten fruit from pawpaw patches a mile or two up and down the creek here - when I could find fruit... and have named-parentage seedlings planted here with named cultivars like Overleese, Mango, Sunflower, etc., grafted into their canopy. Fruit production in wild patches is hit or miss, and often scarce. They're mostly non-self-fertile, and clonal patches may be big... but they're all genetically identical, and if there's not another clump close enough to get pollenation accomplished... no fruit. In deep shade, they can't get enough sunlight to fruit, so they keep suckering until they finally push up a sprout on the creekbank or in a hole in the canopy where they can get enough light to fruit. That's why full sun plants are so much more productive... yes, they may need some protection from full, scalding sun for a year or two, but then they're good to go.
The named selections have mostly been superior in flavor to the local natives. That said, I still only want one... the Cherokees said they were 'strong medicine'... maybe we shouldn't be gorging on them.
There's been some recent concerns raised regarding annonacin and squamocin in pawpaw fruits possibly contributing to atypical Parkinson's Disease. If you've got an interest, there are a couple of charts and articles linked here:
 
My dad was walking in a woods road that we have hunted in for almost 30 years now and there was a paw paw fruit laying on the road. He started looking around and said they were everywhere in there. Not sure if someone planted them or if they've been there forever and just started to fruit. They're in a hollow, along the east side of a hill, in poor soil so I wouldn't expect them to grow very fast. He's been planting some at his house and up at our family camp unsuccessfully for years. Might try to transplant one of these in the spring.
 
While walking around the woods a few weeks ago, I used PictureThis to identify several plants and trees I did not know. One of them came up as a PawPaw. Other than hearing the little jingle as a kid "way down yonder in the PawPaw patch", I know nothing about them, so I've enjoyed reading this thread. Is what I pictured really a PawPaw (see below)? I've seen them for years around my farm, but have never noticed fruit on them. They are usually in a smallish thicket towards the bottom of a hill and perhaps growing over into my trails. Just curious???

Screenshot 2021-12-07 at 9.27.57 AM.jpg
 
Paw paw are interesting but I’m wary of eating them. I’ve had a couple surprise gastrointestinal issues the next day after eating a paw paw. Maybe just need to build up tolerance or limit intake. I have some planted and grown some from seed. I like them for diversity and being native.

For deer, I’m more into persimmons. Love my neighbors tree still hanging 1-2” fruit in December. I need more of those.
 
You absolutely do not want to try to make 'fruit leather' or dehydrate pawpaw pulp! You'll be spending a day or two afraid to move more than a few feet away from the toilet.
15 yrs or so ago, I made some pawpaw cookies - using a recipe from the KSU Pawpaw website, even - and took them to work. Everyone that ate one (or more) got sick. My boss spent 3 days at home... thought he was gonna have to go in the hospital for IV fluids. I've still not lived that down.

Most of the small pawpaw plants you find out and about are suckers with little to no root system of their own... transplanting them is a very low success rate proposition. As the sole surviving temperate-climate genus in a family of tropical plants, they are very much unlike most of the deciduous tree species we deal with (oaks, hickories, apples, persimmons, etc. ) They do NO root growth during their dormant season... so transplanting suckers or even bareroot seedlings needs to be done just as they're breaking dormancy in spring, or in late summer just as they're starting to wind down. For that reason, most nurseries handling them are doing them as containerized seedlings from the outset; if they're offering bareroot pawpaws, I'd steer clear of them.
The NY nurseryman, John H. Gordon, told me, back in the early '90s, that if he was 30 yrs younger, instead of planting out grafted pawpaws, he'd just select largest-leaved seedlings of good named varieties and outplant them. One thing that many of us have experienced with grafted pawpaws is that it's pretty common, a few years down the road, for the grafts to decline and you end up with whatever seedling rootstock you started out with. A high percentage of seedlings tend to produce fruit very similar in size/quality to that of the 'mother' tree, so a named-parentage seedling has a way better than average chance of producing quality fruits.

I never knew what a pawpaw was until I was well into my 30s... but once somebody identified one for me... I realized I'd been seeing them all my life...all along the creeks there in AL where I grew up... just never saw any with fruits. Even when we'd go back to AL to visit family, and I was actively looking - I never found A.triloba with fruit hanging. But... the dwarf/small-flowered pawpaw, A.parviflora, was also common on our farm... usually on droughty upland sites... and they would be covered with their little thumb-sized fruits, festooned all along the branches.
 
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