@@Dave-so7sf well that’s certainly thinking outside the box. Thanks for sharing.

@@RMyly I hear you. Believe it or not, after you do it a few times and figure out what to do, it goes rather quickly.

Awesome! This is a great plant that I also have growing all around. Love it. Thanks for sharing.

@@katiepuckett573 good idea. I may try that next year with mine to kick start them a little. Where do you get the sulfur pellets?

@@katiepuckett573 awesome. I’m hoping mine is in 6B/7A. Docs say hardy to zone 7.

They are usually rooted in a few weeks. I let the roots continue to grow and pot them up in the mid-fall (now for me) or in the early spring. Just depends on when I get time to do it.

@@tomescone1293 correct

@@leoziebol I’ve not had issues with rabbits. I have had issues with groundhogs. The recycled tree tubes work great. I use them over and over until they are falling apart.

@@penueletiaannadickson4170 the tree in the video is Allegheny.

Hi, Todd here. Planting comfrey around any plant will help provide nutrients to the other plant that would generally not be available to the plant. This is because comfrey is a dynamic accumulator that has a long tap root and mines for nutrients and brings said nutrients up to the leaves of comfrey. When you chop and drop the leaves or they just die at the end of each season the nutrient is now on the surface and it will break down into the soil. With that said a few caveats. Comfrey will keep weeds away from a small pawpaw however, if the pawpaw is too short the comfrey will shade the pawpaw and cause it to grow slower. If the comfrey is too close to the pawpaw, the roots of the comfrey will out compete the pawpaw and again cause it to grow slower. Once the pawpaw is say 3' (1M) tall, you are safe to plant comfrey. If the pawpaw is much shorter than that you risk the issues I talked about above.

@@greatescapefarms Hello Todd, thank you for your advice. I allready planted the comfrey around the small paw paw seedlings, I will remove them and plant again when the seedlings are 1 meter tall.

@ you are most welcome. Speaking from experience on this.

Most of the plants are still alive, but they are not thriving. The reason is they are surrounded by over-story trees and getting too much shade. I have other swales in the full sun and the plants in those swales are doing wonderfully. I installed the swales the same as I did in this video, just in full sun vs. mostly shade.

It is a great event and they do sell single day tickets if you ever want to just check it out.

It is held in Virginia at the Warren County Fairgrounds.

There are a lot of variables, but basically if it is watered regularly, in full sun, and mulched well you should see fruit in 3 to 4 years.

You are lucky to have that problem. Many struggle to get pawpaw to take hold.

@@huguesdemol8308 depending on how many of the seeds take, I may be able to give this a shot next year. Thanks for the suggestion!

I agree to a point. The difference is that seeds dropped to the ground is protected by leaf litter that drops from trees around it. I'm testing because I've heard many people even pawpaw experts say that the seeds lose viability if they freeze and when I ask "how long of a freeze does it take to lose viability?" no one can give me numbers. I've looked around for previous research and not found any (my guess is there is some out there somewhere, it's just not coming up in search engines).

@@greatescapefarms You would need to be neck deep in leaves to have any chance at preventing the seed from hard freezing here. Over a month with temps in single digits and dropping to -15 is hard to escape.

You are most welcome!

Thank you so much. I'm really enjoying the experimenting and looking forward to getting the results to questions I've had for a long time.

Thanks for the kind words. I've done videos on Che and Medlar before. I graft Che and Pawpaw. I've tried grafting medlar last year on 12 quince seedlings and none of them took. I'll get back to that in the future.

You are most welcome. I've sped up growing seedlings in pots by watering every 3 days this past year under a 50% shade cloth. I some some seedlings as tall as 3' by September. I'll be doing that every year now.

@@greatescapefarms you should do a video on it. does that mean you were watering more or less than usual?

@@derekfarealz I normally water once a week under the shade cloth. So this was about twice the usual amount. Pawpaws seem to be right hardy, but they seem to thrive with a lot of water.

@@greatescapefarms hopefully they enjoy my hydroponic setup 😁

@@derekfarealz I'd love to hear about that or watch a video on it if you have it.

That is not planned for this year. I've been experimenting with grafting but haven't posted any video of the process until I'm better at it and get more reliable results. I may give it a try next year. I was talking with Neal Peterson this year and he gave me a few ideas on different ways to graft.

Thank you for the feedback. I do plan on running more refined tests with larger sample size next year. At this point in time I'm doing some tests from 15 days to two years and others from 15 minutes to 45 days, so once I narrow down an area to focus on, the sample size will be increased significantly. Again, thank you for your feedback and interest!

Good luck! I hope you have as much success as I did.

Thanks for the kind words.

What is meant by nip off the top is to go to the branches and cut the tip of all branches off. That will slow down the vegetative growth and slow it from growing taller thereby allowing more energy to go to fruit production. For zone 9A, you may still get figs this year. In our area we are getting frosts and freezes this week and that will kill the figs fruit and put the plant into dormancy until next spring.

Too few fruits? Allegheny gives a bunch of smaller fruits. Mine is only about 9' tall and I got over 100 fruits from it this year, they were just smaller. My Wabash only gave me a half dozen fruits this year, but they were 1-pound each. Everyone has their favorites, but I'll take a pound of pawpaw over a pound of goji or currant any day.

@@greatescapefarms no way; they go rotten in two days; take all year to ripen and you cannot miss the harvest time; you would be nuts to choose that fruit for any type of survival; apples, pears and of course my first two persimmons and figs are much better choices; i have at last 500 pawpaws in walking distance, 10 right here on my property; nope do not deceive on 1) how fickle they are and 2) how quickly they spoil, 3) how different they taste; all that = no pawpaw

@@andyarellanoChannel I understand what you are saying about survival crops. I have many on site (300 different types/varieties of plants). But in normal times, I enjoy variety and like munching on pawpaws for their brief appearance. Sounds like you have a nice setup with lots of variety at your place as well.

They are hardy to zone 5 if planted in the ground early in the year so the roots can establish. Are you colder than that?

@@greatescapefarms I am zone four. The last ones I had outside were doing great until the dammed grasshoppers ate them, so I don't know how they would have done thru the winter.

@@leslieapplegate65 Chicago Hardy is the most cold hardy that I'm aware of and it is only rated to zone 5, so unless you pot and bring in for the winter it likely wouldn't work.

If I understand your issue correctly, I think it is a simple fix. Give a push on the bracket that the spring is connected to toward the spring. This should give you a lot of slack and you can then maneuver the spring off of that bracket. Once the spring is off the bracket, you can pull the plastic piece and cable back through the hole.

@@synthesaurus sounds great.

@@jacquelineclauson4891 that sounds interesting. I’ll have to look for a recipe.

Hope you are doing well! I was least impressed with York then any of the other festivals I've attended. I'm going to do a blog post comparing all the festivals later this month. Are you going to post a review of the Paw Paw, WV festival?

@@DeanFamilyAcres thank you for the kind words.

Thanks! I picked up Mammoth, Lehmans White Flesh, and I rounded out my Peterson collection with Tallahatchie, and Rappahannock.

The variety is "Flying Dragon Trifolate Orange". It does fruit but they are small and seedy. For this reason, I juice them and use them for a second ferment in Kombucha.

​@@greatescapefarmsthank you

Most aren't aware of pawpaw festivals unless they have an interest AND follow pawpapw groups that advertise these events. I'll be doing a pawpaw review of the 7 different pawpaw festivals I've attended and a comparison of them. It will be posted on GreatEscapeFarms.com later this month.