Pawpaw’s

b116757

5 year old buck +
The new farm has at least 4 pawpaw groves but none of them hardly fruited at all last year. I’m seriously considering canopy releasing the groves of neighboring overstory trees to see if more light will promote fruiting anyone have any experience with pawpaws to comment?
 
paw paws do well in fairly shady areas. Perhaps the vast majority of them are male. Have they fruited well in the past?
 
Paw paw flowers are both male and female, but they can't pollinate themselves. They need another paw paw to pollinate them. Most groves are from the same root system, so even though they have multiple trees, they are essentially the same tree. Hence, pollination will not occur. If the different groves you have are a long distance apart, that could be a lot of your problem.

Lots of folks have problems with paw paw pollination, but if you can get different trees close to each other, that will help. I have that same problem at one place where only one grove exists. However, at another place where I planted seedlings from different groves close to each other, I get good pollination.

Insects are not attracted to paw paw flowers like they are apples and pears. That's one reason why pollination seems to be an issue for a lot of folks. I've even read about people rubbing bacon grease on flowers and also taking a paint brush and moving pollen from one tree to another. Of course, your idea of providing more sunlight will probably help too. Even though they are capable of fruiting with less light than apples, more does generally help.
 
Native provided a lot of good information. Paw paws are pollinated by beetles and flies that are attracted to the rotting smell of the flowers. I have heard some people will collect road kill once the flowers start showing and place the carcasses around their trees to attract beetles and flies to increase pollination.
 
I only have last year as a reference and we were in a pretty bad drought. Fruiting was maybe 3-4 fruits per grove but they are pretty shaded from overstory trees so I thought I’d start there by giving them more light. Maybe the lack of fruit was simply a result of the drought conditions. If I open the canopy and they still don’t fruit well I’ll try grafting some named verities within each grove.
 
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