1/17/2024 0 Comments Paw paw season![]() The perishable fruits keep for just a few days, making it impractical to transport them, so you won’t find them at your local supermarket. ![]() If you’re curious about tasting pawpaws but aren’t ready to grow them, you’re probably out of luck. Just discard the fruit’s thick skin and seeds, as they contain toxins. Regardless, the highly nutritious, creamy fruits, rich in vitamins, minerals and amino acids, can be eaten raw or used in any recipe calling for bananas, such as puddings, smoothies, muffins, cakes and breads. Some folks swear pawpaws taste like bananas others insist their flavor is more papaya-like. But hard pawpaws picked too early will not fully ripen off the tree. To outsmart birds and other wildlife that may try to swipe perfectly ripe fruit, you can pick them a little before they are completely ready, and the last bit will ripen soon afterward. Harvest the fruits in late summer when they are soft to the touch and detach easily. Sunflower is a rare self-fertile variety that theoretically should bear fruit if planted solo but would be more reliable if paired with a mate.Īvoid buying balled-and-burlapped trees, which are grown in fields and then dug up for sale the practice risks damage to pawpaws’ long taproots, impacting their ability to take up water effectively. Seek out grafted, named cultivars, such as Davis, Mary Foos Johnson, Overleese, Sweet Alice and Taylor, which will bear fruit in a couple of years, as opposed to seed-grown trees, which can take as long as six to 10 years to produce. In most cases, you’ll need to grow two different pawpaw cultivars to ensure cross-pollination and fruit production. Pawpaws are not invasive but will form a thicket if left unchecked. ![]() As far as care, the only other thing you’ll want to do is remove suckers that grow around the base of the tree. Water young trees regularly for a year or two until they’re established, and apply a 20-20-20 fertilizer once a month in April, May and June only. Select a sunny to partly sunny spot that offers some wind protection, and plant it in well-draining, slightly acidic soil with a pH level between 5.5 and 5.7. The pawpaw is about as low-maintenance as a fruit tree could be.
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