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Messages - TJ_westPA

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Asiminaholics Anonymous
« on: March 17, 2020, 06:24:33 PM »
Here's that picture I mentioned before:
Wow! That is very yellow for a pawpaw! Is that from a specific variety? Wild find? KSU tree?

I definitely agree that we need more research and actual data on the nausea issue rather than just folklore.


@Triloba Tracker and all:

Thank you for adding in that post from Neal, usirius. And for your advice. I am part of that group where Neal first posted it and I have it saved on my computer so I can reference it to people who get worked up over the acetogenins and parkinsons thing. I agree with Neal on that 100%. Triloba and I were just discussing the issue of nausea from drying or baking and how that issue could use more research into what exactly causes it to happen. Neither of us were implying that pawpaws are unsafe or dangerous to eat. Just making that clear so people don't get too defensive or argumentative lol. I've seen several threads online devolve on that topic...

I have actually eaten the skin of pawpaw fruits (a couple times all of the skin with the pulp of a small pawpaw) several times just to see if it would have any adverse effects. Never had any issue. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone but it's worth experimenting with a bit, if you dare lol.

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Asiminaholics Anonymous
« on: March 16, 2020, 06:29:03 PM »
I'd like to sell fruit in the future as well, so anytime I hear about someone getting really nauseous from pawpaws, I start to feel nervous. I wonder if KSU is doing any research on that. I've never experienced any nausea from pawpaws myself, fortunately. No one I've given them to has either, that I know of. I haven't done that much experimenting with them, though. I've made pawpaw bread once, a pie once, salsa once, mixed into ice cream, and smoothies. I'd experiment more if I had access to more good pawpaws. I get plenty of wild ones each year but those almost always have some bitterness to them, which tends to readily transfer to most things I make with them. I don't think there was any bitterness in the bread, but I could hardly taste the pawpaw flavor itself lol.
The dehydration thing is weird too. Obviously fully dehydrating them is a bad idea, but it's hard to tell with baked goods. Some people seem to have had issues with cookies or bread, but most cases seem fine. Maybe in those cases the pulp got rancid somehow before baking? idk lol
You may be right about nausea being caused by picking them too early. I know I've heard that from someone else as well.

Yeah, they definitely aren't disease-free but still have relatively few disease and pest issues compared to other fruits. I've had less issues with my pawpaws than any other fruits I grow, especially with the stupid SWD problem with berries and figs. >.<

A red fleshed pawpaw would be awesome lol. I wouldn't hope for more than deep orange, but who knows what's possible.

That's pretty impressive to find one that was that yellow. I've never seen any with a color change. Yes, I've seen the variety at Peaceful Heritage. They really do hype up every variety they have lol. I have to stop myself from reading the descriptions of their fruit since they make every variety sound amazing and like a must-have. I bought a Chappell and Benson from them a few years ago. They were small but looked pretty healthy and I like that they used deep pots. I tried to buy another Benson and a Tallahatchie from them last year, but on the day they restocked their pawpaws they sold out of almost all of them in like 30 mins. I couldn't even access the site for 15 mins because there was so much traffic that it wouldn't load. By the time I got on, half of the varieties were gone. I think a lot of pawpaw people found out about them last year or the year before and it caused some hype. I know people mentioned them on some of the pawpaw facebook groups several times. I think they were the first supplier of Chappell back in 2017 before it was named, which is when I bought it. I don't think the other nurseries had it in stock until spring of 2018.

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Asiminaholics Anonymous
« on: March 16, 2020, 12:52:19 PM »


Here’s a list a well-known pawpaw man sent me a while ago:

1. reduce the amount of nausea reaction (not understood yet)
2. improve shelf life (I don't really like the term, but it is what it is)
3. reduce the bruising reaction (without impairing flavor)
4. thicker skins (obvious why, but don't hurt flavor)
5. reduce the fungi that discolor the skin
6. find a range of new colors for flesh and skin
7. develop a color-break (the skin changes color when it is ready to be picked from the tree)
8. find types that can grow further north, in cooler summers

That's a great list.
1 will definitely take a good bit of time and research to figure out but is pretty important (imo) to figure out.
2,3,4&5 would all be great for improving their storage, shipping, and getting them into more markets.
I'm wondering if the phyllosticta issue will be show up in my orchard at some point. I never noticed it on any of the wild fruits in my region, but I live at the northern edge of their range where the population is sparse and patches of trees tend to be fairly isolated from other patches. I did notice some on some of the fruit at a festival near Lancaster, PA in 2018. I also wonder if it's more of an issue in the south vs further north.
6 is something I'd be pretty interested in, especially deeper orange colored pulp. There are some white fleshed varieties out there.
7 seems pretty doable since there are several varieties that apparently due this to some degree.
8 I know a lot of people would love this. From what I've read, it seems like the earliest variety might be Kentucky Champion. Maybe Summer
   Delight or Halvin, but Cliff England lists 3 of his varieties to be the "earliest" (KY Champion), or "first to ripen" (Summer Delight), or "3 weeks
   earlier than all others" (Halvin) so I'm skeptical about his assessments.

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Asiminaholics Anonymous
« on: March 15, 2020, 06:30:16 PM »
I don't think Neal, himself, sells trees anymore, but he certainly still benefits from the patents on his varieties.

That's pretty cool, Triloba, that you've been able to get advice from Jerry, Neal, and Sherri. Some of the most knowledgeable pawpaw people in the business.

Maybe it's easy enough nowadays to get good tasting and good textured fruit from seed, so other criteria may be a more important focus. It definitely seems like KSU is focused on breeding pawpaws that are particularly productive. Chappell seems to have so many good qualities going for it: productive, vigorous grower, great taste, great texture, large fruit, low percent seed. Vigorous growth is undoubtedly a nice trait to have with pawpaws.

Anyone have opinions on what traits they'd like to see breeders focus on more with pawpaws?

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Asiminaholics Anonymous
« on: March 15, 2020, 11:09:52 AM »
There is also controversy about how likely you are to get good fruit from seedling trees of high quality parents. Some say good/great parents will very likely produce good/great offspring, while others say the odds are low. I tend to think the odds are good. But grafting is the only way to guarantee high quality. And there is definitely a huge difference between poor wild fruit (some wild trees are great) and named varieties.

I was reading a bit of this lovely thread and thought I'd share what I know on this issue. I'm in a pawpaw group on facebook and Neal Peterson is also part of that group. When he shares advice, I make note of it lol. At one point someone was looking for recommendations on where to buy seeds and someone responded with the website: nuttrees.net (Cliff England's site) and Neal said this in response: "They have select seed and that is good. I disagree with their statement that the progeny has a 95% chance of equally the parent. The probability is closer to 25%. (In other words the usual commercial hype.)"

I would think Neal would know better than probably anyone else on that topic. That percentage sounds pretty decent to me, higher than I thought it would be. I'm not sure what that percentage would be for other fruits, but it's certainly higher than apples and not as high as stone fruits. Variety does contribute to this as well, since some varieties can give a better chance of good offspring than others (e.g. Golden Delicious). Also, trees that require a pollinator tend to be lower than those that are self-pollinating, so maybe Sunflower and Prima would have a better chance of good offspring than other varieties if they are pollinated by their own flowers.

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Two pawpaws in the same hole?
« on: March 13, 2020, 08:29:06 AM »
I say go for it. It gives you more trunks to work with if you plan on grafting, more diverstiy, and better pollination. Pawpaws naturally grow really close to each other in the wild and form intermixed root systems, so I don't think competition among the trees will be an issue. Pawpaws are probably one of the better trees to do that with.

Check out this article about a pawpaw orchard in Sweden. Nearly 100 trees, all planted at 1 meter or less apart. I'm sure better spacing would be more ideal for a productive orchard but, with limited space, this certainly looks like it can work out just fine. I love the look of such a dense planting of pawpaw trees like that. Almost like a jungle!

https://xn--skogstrdgrden-hfbr.xn--stjrnsund-x2a.nu/ett-besok-till-nordens-storsta-asimina-odling/?lang=en

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Temperate Fruit Discussion / Re: Two pawpaws in the same hole?
« on: March 12, 2020, 03:32:45 PM »
I haven't tried it myself but, on the growingfruit forum, tjasko told me that Jerry Lehman used to recommend putting two seedlings in the same hole for better pollination. Here's a quote from him: "Jerry Lehman recommends planting 2 pawpaws right in the same hole for maximum pollination. He says he gets much more fruit set that way, which is kind of surprising when you consider that he already has rows of them 5 feet apart."

Here's tjasko's report (with lots of pictures) on Jerry Lehman's orchard from 2017. You can see how close those trees are to each other & there's at least 1 pic where you can see what looks 2 pawpaws that were planted in the same hole. 
https://growingfruit.org/t/virtual-tour-of-jerry-lehmans-orchard/10616

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"Cripps has a short shelf life and gets soft, fluffy textured easily"

yes, I frequently get old pink lady/cripps pink and this is disappointing.  The big attraction to me with Cosmic Crisp is if it is infact reliably good instead of inconsistent based on storage length.

I've tried every type of apple I've ever seen for sale.  I've seen a few specialty varieties but most were not memorable.  The only new ones I think are top tier so far are Sweet Tango and Cosmic Crisp.

Today I just got a couple Wild Twist apples.  They are fine, taste like Fuji.  About same as SugarBee, maybe less sweet

I tried a couple Wild Twist apples recently as well. I'm from PA, too. I thought the texture was really nice and it had a good sweet/tart balance without being overly sweet, but the flavor was almost non-existent. It's cool to see a more locally developed variety, I just wish it wasn't so bland. It has everything else going for it.

I've tried the Cosmic Crisps too and thought they were pretty good. Better than Honeycrisp, in my opinon, but I'm not a big fan of Honeycrisp to begin with. More flavorful. It's one of the better super-crisp apples for sure.

I agree with you on SweeTango as well. It's one of the most complexly flavored apples I've tasted.

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