The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hello! I've seen a lot of talk in this forum about Pawpaws and I've been interested in them for several months now.
I have a couple questions about them though,

1) Will they grow well in my area? I am in zone 9b. Locally we grow alot of stone fruits in my area so chill hours should be ok?
2) What are some good varieties to grow? I've seen discussion about some tasting like mangos, others like banana, etc. I personally prefer banana, but the wife loves mangos.
3) Can they be maintained in a pot?
4) Sourcing: would anyone have seeds come late winter/early spring to try? I'm at my limit for what I can germinate and keep warm for the winter here.

Thanks!

Send me some I'll plant it for you sounds like it would love my area. Haha

I ripped out a bunch of my tomatoes that I failed to stake up in time and were taking over the garden and found 3 rats nests! Haha! Be gone suckers!
too bad they were all empty... I may have already got the inhabitants...

The darn things love my bay tree now too. saw 4 of them in it last night :/
Time for some mass 'removal' anyone have tips for catching large quantities fast? live or dead... I don't really care just fastest removal method besides poison.

I'm having better luck putting them outside. I had some on a heatmat inside but nothing happened. My day time temps are still 90-95 in the valley (ugh) if my night time temps drop more though I may put a heating mat on my outside table and see how they do. I plan on bringing plants in and placing them by my sliding glass door once night time temps drop in the 40's.

Yes, slow at first. Once they grow a few real leaves they will grow faster.

Awesome, thanks.

Mine are east facing. I plan to move them to my side yard soon as it's cooling off now. the 110+ weather cooked everything in my yard. I painted the trunk on the hass because sunburn was becoming an issue for me. Remember that my holiday/stewart are new additions and not from my original few earlier this year... once they go permanently in the ground they will be in the easternmost part of my property but that corner gets almost full sun all day.

Late yesterday, I pulled the one remaining dead Avocado from my Spring plantings.  Five of nine died in all, however at least three of the five were already dead going in (hailstorm survivors, and rotting root systems) from the outset.  I haven't yet replaced the others, but this replacement is a Stewart.  It fills out the five tree slots I still have growing on the side of my yard.  None are thriving now, but all are alive.  It will be interesting to see how well I can protect them going into the colder seasons.

Something I always puzzle over is the water habits at the nursery.  The general conclusion for why my trees did so poorly early on was that the soil medium was too absorbent and that the trees had wet feet.  So the old leaves would turn brown and drop.  A lot of new leaves seemed to fizzle up and dry before they even got started.  I'm still not 100% convinced it was for over-watering with my once a month one or two gallons watering regime early on.  But to the original point, whenever I stop by and check these trees at the nursery, they are soaking wet in their 5G pots.  I think they water twice a day, morning and evening.  They are grown in a kind of redwood chip heavy soil, that seems to get really wet.  Low perlite/vermiculite content.  I'm wondering how they can water the trees this way and not have problems, whereas I am barely watering them at my house and the assumption is over-watering.  It could be the limited light these trees get on the side of the house is in part to blame, however of the five trees that fizzled, four were in full or nearly full sun.  Only one of the five on the side of the house died.

Here are some pics of the new Stewart.  It's the best of about six available at the Roseville, CA Green Acres Nursery.  They're all Four Winds Growers stock.  Kind of expensive at ~$38 a tree.

At home depot here in town they definitely water it daily. I think you don't see issues because the nurseries out here have such a small inventory they cycle through it pretty fast - before the root rot starts too show.
I have removed all mulch from my trees so they can dry out a bit more.

I'm going to leave it for the season. I am getting new growth but barely. The weathers been nice and it's tricking alot of my plants right now...
The trees are established to a good size where no new growth would be quite fine with me, though. I will probably do some cleanup on the lemon tree as theres alot of crossing branches that make picking fruit hard. I believe it's on a dwarf rootstalk as the canopy is only 2-3 ft up.

The replacement trees are only a couple of weeks old now. Not much to show.
Holiday wasn't in the best shape and a branch has dropped it's leaves already but hasn't withered up.
I think it will make a recovery but we will see.
The stewart seems alot more forgiving and the Hass has come back from a pretty bad root rot issue. I'll send some pictures in a couple weeks.

Trees are very well established. I got hundreds of oranges, lemons and probably 50 pommelos as big as my head last year.
I noticed some of this last year too but it wasn't as severe. The lime tree is my only 'young' citrus on my property.

If the damage is already done I don't mind leaving it on their, it doesn't seem to affect the production at all.

Funny how I posted this and forgot to purchase some... atleast I still have about 6lbs.

Was on amazon today and saw osmocote is on sale. $15 for 8lb bag.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GTDGMHC/ref=sxr_rr_xsim_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=9ddc66f6-9fc0-49ff-b2fa-06a39d9859e6&pd_rd_wg=FHUaV&pf_rd_r=0C8AB73NPW1KTFHPJY1S&pf_rd_s=desktop-rhs-carousels&pf_rd_t=301&pd_rd_i=B00GTDGMHC&pd_rd_w=BvM5o&pf_rd_i=grafting+knife&pd_rd_r=751d60d7-02fb-4a42-8c0e-ad74493d9cb9&ie=UTF8&qid=1536774324&sr=2

Just an FYI, I know alot of people here use it.