Raintree Nursery's Paw Paw Growing Guide

[Music] hi folks it's laura with rain tree nursery and today we have a beautiful pawpaw to show you pawpaw is asamina triloba this is the largest fruit that's native to the north american continent this is a tree fruit it kind of looks like a squat banana when it's ripe and it tastes like the most heavenly combination of banana mango custard oh it's rich and delicious and so tropical it's it's an extremely hardy plant because it is native to the east coast of the united states and up into canada and it grows in understory conditions usually on stream sites so it's rare to see one out in the sun like this but because we're in the mild pacific northwest they can grow out in full sun here now as far as pollination goes on a pawpaw they must have a pollination partner so you can have two seedlings which are genetically separate from one another or you can have two different grafted varieties that are not the same those will cross-pollinate as well what's unusual about this plant well there's a lot that's unusual about this plant but one of the coolest things i think is that it's actually pollinated by flies and beetles or carrion insects and because these were found normally along streams there were there were a lot of rotting things in the water and it's those bugs that evolved with this plant to pollinate so if you're not having a lot of swamp bugs in your in your garden you can take chicken necks or chicken feet or uh some kind of little rotten meat and you can put that out here in your grove of paw paws and that will help to ensure that you get good insect pollination so as i said before usually this is an understory plant it is very sensitive to full sun in the first few years of its life so either you plant it on the shady side of some other full grown plants if you live in the hotter climates or here in the pacific northwest you can plant the plant and then put like a little shade cloth tent over the top of it and remove that when it's not the hot part of the summer that will help keep the leaves which are terribly photo sensitive from burning once you get past year three or four you don't usually have to shade them or protect them they're usually strong enough to take full sun another unusual thing about pawpaw is they are very delicate when it comes to transplanting so when you get your plant you need to be very very careful with it because it has a delicate tap root you want to just put it into the ground slide it out of the container don't move the roots at all to loosen them just set them in very gently backfill and walk away slowly so these are some of the later fruits to ripen in the garden once you get past the full summer sun into the beginning of fall is when you want to start looking for your ripe fruit [Music] pawpaw is not the kind of plant that you want to grow in the pot they tend to not like to be pruned and they can grow to be quite large trees anywhere from 12 to 25 feet tall when mature no pot's going to hold that also they have a very delicate and aggressive tap root so they a pot will not tolerate that either so not one that you want to grow in a pot now when it comes to insect and disease they're pretty hardy plants the one thing that you need to watch out for especially when they're young are slugs and snails they tend to really go for the brand new leaves that just as they're emerging it's not so prevalent when they're older like this but you really have to watch slugs and snails when they're lilz little babies yes so when it comes to fertility pawpaws do need a lot of really light fluffy soil a lot of organic matter to kind of mimic those stream site settings that you would find them in in nature so when you're planting definitely a third to a half of what you put back in the hole should be compost and you should also have compost around the top of your planting hole as with most trees they need 10 gallons of water per week every week without fail during the warm parts of the year to make sure that they get established once they get past that young stage then they're pretty water independent and frankly pawpaws are one of the perfect things to grow in a home garden because the fruit is so delicate you hardly ever see them sold in stores so one of the only times that you're actually going to find them is if you can go out and wildcraft them or if you grow them in your home garden and that's all for now bye folks see you next time

Channel: Raintree Nursery

Views: 16,436

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Id: 9Nmnc9vzim8

Length: 5min 30sec (330 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021