PawPaw flowers

24 April 2024

[@lyonheart84]

The KSU Atwood is a very substantial specimen Dom. When the flowers become male the pollen should be very obvious 😁

[@MoebiusUK]

Ahh, thanks for the tip. I remember you said something about that in a recent video you uploaded. I would love to get a PawPaw or 2 this year so will definetly be checking for pollen every few days.

[@PeterEntwistle]

It's great to see so many flowers on your 'Mango' Pawpaw this year! Hopefully, your attempt at cross-pollination is successful 🤞. How many years have those Pawpaw trees been inground, Dom?

[@MoebiusUK]

Thanks, Peter. I think it's a couple of years minimum for the smaller Mango. The KSU Atwood was more recent and has been in-ground for just over a year. Yes, it's good to see many flowers on the Mango, It's been like that since I got it. I think it's a very heavy blooming variety. I have a scion in the fridge to graft onto my most vigourous pawpaw rootstock. I think one of the things with grafted named varieties is we're not in control of the rootstock the nursery selects. Personally, I'll ONLY graft my named variety onto seedlings that have exhibited fast growing. A year ago I grew 30 seeds, some have proven to be super fast growers. These I will keep, while any runts will be thrown away.

[@PeterEntwistle]

@@MoebiusUK Yeah, that's a great point about choosing the best rootstocks for grafting onto. Of course, the ones I grafted last year were just any I had available, although quite a few of them put on decent growth last year. I'll definitely have to get them potted up soon. I had a disaster with my pawpaw seedlings last year. I don't think it was a good idea to plant them in the trays that I used. I don't think they were deep enough for them. Also snails kept eating them as well. I still have some seeds in the fridge from last year, hopefully, they will still be viable and I might have another go this year.

[@blomeruscalitz2398]

Those are some lovely trees Dom. Regarding the "Mango" Pawpaw, how deep is the raised bed and does it have a solid bottom? I hope that you get plenty of fruit from that tree but I'm a bit worried that the branches might break under the weight of the fruit. Are you planning on supporting the branches if you get a lot of fruit?

[@MoebiusUK]

Thanks Blom. I might rig something up to bear the weight fruit if I see an issue. No doubt the fruit would be on the smallish size anyway (if it sets, that is). So far I have only been able to take pollen from it, rather than provide it pollen. The raised bed has no bottom. It's only about 20" high..