How to Grow Pawpaw from Seed

Hello everybody. It is pawpaw season here in Ohio. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere where pawpaws grow wild or have a friend who's growing trees, gather up some of this fruit and be sure to save the seeds because you can grow North America's largest edible fruit for free. Pawpaws are a small understory tree native to the United States that grow in many areas of the eastern half of the country. Pawpaw fruit, for the uninitiated, is often described as tasting like a cross between a banana and a mango. I find that description a bit lacking. It is hard to really capture the nuanced flavor of this unusual fruit without having just tried it. I will also say that pawpaws seem to be one of those foods that people either love or hate. There's no real in-between here. And flavor and eating quality can vary widely across seedling populations and especially amongst cultivated varieties. That being said, I want you all to pick up some pawpaws, throw them in your basket. Did anybody else learn that goofy song in elementary school or was it just my podunk country school way down yonder in the pawpaw patch? Because we are going to grow some pawpaws from seed. So first, we want to harvest the seeds from mature fruit. Typically, I just pick the fruit up off the ground. The skins will be anywhere from green to a mottled black. And I want them where they're soft and yielding to the touch, not firm but also not rotting. You can also gently shake the tree and collect any fruit that falls. But do be aware that these bruise and damage really easily, which is a reason that you don't see them in grocery stores. To get at the seeds, we can either scoop out the pulp and remove the slippery seed coatings by hand. That pulp can be frozen for later use. Or just eat the fruit on the spot and spit out the seeds for later planting. Next, we'll wash the seeds off. And one step recommended by the experts, which I've failed to do in the past, is to sterilize the seed. Kentucky State University recommends washing collected seed in a dilute bleach solution of 5%. This is recommended to kill any fungus that might be present. And then the most important step in having success with germinating pawpaw seed is to ensure the seeds receive a period of moist-cold stratification. And do not let the seeds dry out. For seeds to break dormancy, they need a minimum of 70 to 100 days, sometimes more, in that cold-moist environment. Now we can meet these cold-moist stratification requirements by a couple of different methods. The first is just to direct sow our collected seed in the fall and let them overwinter. This obviously is going to mimic what's going to happen in nature. A lot of times, these fruit are going to be eaten by animals, pooped out, and then kind of sit there through the fall, winter, early spring before they germinate. This is something I haven't done solely because pawpaw seeds can take so long to germinate that I'm afraid I'm going to lose track of where I have planted and honestly just forget about them. Another option is to take our collected seeds and sow them in pots or containers and then keep those containers in a cool environment over the winter. So we want some place that's going to get cool but not freezing. An unheated garage or barn is an ideal setup. Or the third option, which is what I usually do, is to mimic that cold stratification period by using the fridge. I simply wrap the seeds in several layers of damp paper towels and place all of that in a sealed Ziploc baggie or similar container and then just pop it in the refrigerator. We want to keep these seeds ideally at temps just above freezing, so about 33 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit. You can also be more professional about it and use dampened sphagnum moss, which is what Kentucky State University advises. Make sure to label the bag with the name and date to ensure it doesn't just get mixed in with the leftovers. I typically aim for planting my cold stratified seed the following spring, so it's essentially sitting in the refrigerator for about three months. However, with this batch of seedlings, I actually put pawpaw seeds in the fridge and then forgot about them for about a year and a half, so they didn't get planted out for, it was like the second spring after they had been in the refrigerator. I actually had great germination, so I think as long as the material, the paper towels or the sphagnum moss remains damp, your seeds can sit in there for quite a long time and remain viable. I used to also think that I needed to scarify pawpaw seeds to get good germination. Scarification is just a process of like nicking seeds or scraping them with sandpaper. Usually you do this with seeds that have a very thick seed coating, but I have since learned that that is completely unnecessary. It is really just that that cold stratification is key. When that cold stratification period is up, it's time to plant our seeds. Now I've used standard potting or seed starting mix with good results, but with the batch I'm planting today, I actually just filled up my pots with garden soil. I prefer to use an air pruning style pot, like these Anderson band pots, ideally the taller version. I think this is a 10 inch band pot because pawpaws develop a long tap root. We'll want to sow the seed about an inch deep and water the potting medium well. I will then just move my whole set of pots out to the greenhouse or set the whole thing in a protected partially shaded corner of my garden. And now I can tell you from experience, the trickiest part of growing pawpaws from seed is the waiting. Pawpaws feel like they take forever to germinate. In fact, I have given up on entire batches of seeds thinking that they were duds and nothing was going to germinate, only to have them pop up and sprout months later. Pawpaw seeds will germinate in two to three weeks at soil temperatures of around 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. It'll take longer in cool spring conditions, but the shoot takes about two months to emerge. So with my seeded spring sown pawpaws, I think I didn't see any actual what looks like above ground growth till July. I didn't document it exactly, but I feel like that's about when it was. The seedling growth itself is also quite slow in the first two years as they're putting a lot of energy into that taproot growth. So you can see here with this latest batch that I have again, I think these popped in about July. And most of my seedlings here are just about six inches tall. The one in this bigger Anderson pot actually has a little more height to it, but most of them in this size pot are right around six inches tall. Now you absolutely can overwinter these pawpaw seedlings in these pots and wait until next spring to plant them out. Just like the seeds I mentioned earlier, you would want to keep these in an unheated barn or garage and environment that's going to get below 45 degrees to ensure that these get the proper dormancy period. But you don't want this potting soil or the roots freezing solid. If you opt for that route, it's also a good idea to periodically check the potting medium and make sure that it stays moist as well. But I am going to go ahead and plant my pawpaw seedlings out today and we're at about mid-September here in Ohio. So these will still have plenty of time to get established before my ground starts freezing solid. Now another trick to having great success with growing pawpaw trees is to get their environment right. So as I mentioned in the beginning, pawpaws are naturally an understory tree. In the wild, they're most often found growing in partial shade in moist but well-drained soil that is rich in organic matter. You'll often find them alongside creeks, but they don't like standing water or heavy clay soil. They also grow best with a soil pH of 5.5 to 7.0. They do require around 400 chill hours, that is time spent at temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit to break dormancy, and they typically require about 150 frost-free days to mature fruit. Their native range falls within about the zones 5 through 8 in the United States. When selecting a site for your pawpaw, just keep in mind that a happy, healthy, mature pawpaw can reach heights of about 15 to 20 feet with a slightly smaller spread. It's generally recommended that you plant these 8 to 10 feet apart for proper pollination, no further than 30 feet apart. You can actually go closer than 8, but you're going to end up with smaller trees that produce less fruit overall. Pawpaws are generally self-incompatible and need cross-pollination to set fruit. So just be sure to plant at least two non-genetically identical plants if you are wanting to get fruit. When I'm wild fruit, I like to collect from various sites and start a mixture of seeds from everywhere just to increase my chances of cross-pollination. But if you're growing named cultivars, again, just be sure to get two different varieties at least. Be aware also that pawpaws can form colonies by spreading underground via root suckers. You'll see new trees popping up everywhere if they're in a place where they're happy. You can let those suckers go, or they can be pretty easily managed just by mowing off if they pop up where you don't want them. Now even though in the wild pawpaws are an understory plant, they are growing in the shade, they will actually be more productive and often the fruit quality is better if they are in full sun. But immature seedlings are going to be much easier to get established and put on healthy growth when they are given some protection, both from wind and from sun. For this reason, many growers prefer to use a tree shelter or grow tube while young seedlings are less than about two to three feet tall to provide shade, to help reduce wind stress, conserve moisture, and protect trees from animals and herbicide drift. Another option is to plant pawpaw seedlings in an area where they're going to be somewhat protected from wind and shaded by plants that are taller than they are, that can either be removed once the seedlings are bigger and established, or that the pawpaws will actually outgrow as they get big. But as a general rule, pawpaw seedlings are going to be happier if they are given some shade until they are at least 30 inches tall. This fall, I'm planting some pawpaw seedlings inside my fenced-in garden, directly into this hugelkultur bed. I'll be using shade cloth to protect them this fall and early next spring, and then I have sunchokes planted to the west of these pawpaws, which quickly grow to a height over eight feet and will shade and protect these young seedlings. I'm also planning on planting some in our woods down by the creek, but that's going to be more of a fend-for-yourself, survival of the fittest kind of scenario. To plant these, I don't have to do much in the way of soil prep, as I've already done a lot of work in here in my garden to improve this soil. As I mentioned too, the bed that these are going into is a hugelkultur bed, which is an ideal setup for plants like pawpaws. When selecting your own site, just opt for somewhere with good drainage, and don't skimp on adding a lot of really good, rich organic matter if possible. I'm going to dig a hole the same depth as the root system, and about two to three times the diameter of my root mass. I'm also mixing some very high-quality compost into the planting area prior to transplanting my seedlings. I'm going to set these in here. I want them growing at the same height that they were in my Anderson pots. Backfill, and then really securely tamp this soil back in, and then I'm going to water this all in thoroughly. Now, this is one thing, again, pawpaws naturally grow in pretty moist areas, so we want to keep that soil moisture consistent while they are getting established. I'm also going to mulch this area well with wood chips. Now, leaf mulch, straw, grass clippings, or any other kind of natural mulch would work well here also. And then for right now, as I mentioned, until the temperatures start to cool off a bit, I'm going to cover these with shade cloth. I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but really staying on top of watering when these seedlings are young is so important. Those first two years are critical. We want to ensure that we are keeping these well-watered, keeping that soil moist pretty much at all times. We also want to make sure that the entire area is free of any weed competition. These young seedlings don't do well with weed competition, and to help with that, to help both with the weed competition and to retain soil moisture, I'm probably going to come back in and add another nice thick layer of some kind of organic mulch in the spring. Pawpaw trees should also be fertilized in the spring for the best results. So I'm going to share a couple of different fertilization recommendations. The first comes from Kentucky State University, which has an excellent pawpaw program and is a wealth of information. They recommend applying a water-soluble fertilizer through fertigation at 500 ppm once in May, June, and July. Alternatively, you can apply Urea, NatureSafe, or 10-10-10 at one ounce of actual nitrogen per tree annually during establishment. They also recommend applying three to four ounces of actual nitrogen per tree in the late winter after the second year as the tree matures. Now, that information is geared more toward a small-scale commercial grower. So if you're doing a whole orchard of pawpaws with fertigation lines run and all that good stuff, I also tend to prefer to use more natural fertilizers, manures, naturally-derived foods, that type of thing. So I like to use the recommendations from Peaceful Heritage. This is a nursery in Kentucky that has a lot of really useful information about pawpaws as well. They recommend fertilizing heavily every March, April, May, and June, and then to stop all fertilizing, they use granulated chicken manure and liquid feed with fish emulsion and kelp extract. They give their orchard trees chicken manure one time a year in April, and they're given fish emulsion one to two times a month every March, April, May, and June. They also highly tout things like high-quality compost, rotted manure, fish emulsion, kelp meal, for really giving those trees, especially when they're young and getting established, a lot of readily available nutrients. Now, seedling pawpaws are generally going to take about five to eight years to get established and start producing fruit. If you're growing a grafted cultivar, they oftentimes start producing a little more quickly. The trees will put on these really interesting looking blossoms in the late spring, which unfortunately smell a bit like rotting meat, but that is to attract their main pollinators, which are flies and beetles, not the honeybees that we typically associate with fruit tree pollination. Pawpaws can also be hand pollinated. Well, I have got to get the rest of these seedlings planted while the weather is still cooperating with me, but drop a line in the comments below and let me know if you are planning on planting some pawpaws. Now, I've also included in the video description links to a lot of information and resources about pawpaws, as well as some sources for getting seed or grafted cultivars, if that's what you're interested in. So be sure to check out those resources as well. And if you found today's video helpful, please consider subscribing to my channel, Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.