Down yonder in the pawpaw patch

I can see the old farm house sitting up on a slight hill with a rock wall that ran along the property line. My recollection is the pappaw trees were along the rock wall. The pappaws always turned black after a day or so and were rich tasting. I remenber them to have a black seed that was flat and hard. Never had any since my youth but remember going down to the pappaw patch more than once.

Since Mom and Dad are gone I doubt I could even find the location but the memories remain clear. My grandparents are all from Kentucky. My greats had moved to Oklahoma. Down in the SW corner. I now live in Colorado n. My grands and parents sang it to me and I sang it to mine. Down, down in the nest, where the little birds rest….. It was okay I suppose, but I found it to be a rather dull and pointless activity personally!

I preferred all the other things we did but Paw Paw Patch is fun to explain to anyone that has never heard of it. I always assumed it was some sort of berry or fruit patch actually!

I live on a land trust in Real County, Texas, the hill country, and we try to raise a lot of our own food. I always heard of pawpaws and would love to grow them if we could get the kind of tree that would survive frost and hard freezes — I think anything that survives in Appalachia should survive here. I have a greenhouse with very high ceiling and have papaya seeds that probably came from Mexico. What do we do next?

Appreciate any help! Wild Paw paws usually taste like a cross between a banana and a very ripe mango. Though some might have a vanilla or strawberry taste mixed in there as well. The texture is sort of like a custard. The seeds are very large and easy enough to eat around. You will never see them in a store, though sometimes, rarely, you might find a very few at a fruit market in the early fall. The skin is too thin, the meat too soft and the ripe period too short days for normal fruit transport.

This is why they grown under the shade of larger deciduous leafy tree vegetation. As a child we usually knew where ever single paw paw patch was within about 5 miles or so.

Paws Paws grow wild out in the shady woods back in Kentucky and Ohio and, except for the kids that would stumble upon them to eat as they walked along, they mostly just rotted on the ground and flies and ants would eat them…unseen and unknown. Although each tree bears male and female flower parts, they aren't known for self-pollination. They are also saprophytic, which means the fragrance of their bat-like blooms is not designed to attract insects like bees and butterflies.

Carrion flies and beetles are their target audience, but pawpaws aren't smelly enough. If you shove your nose right into a bloom you might be able to detect the faint scent of roadkill, but our native flies seem mostly unimpressed by it. Growing two or more pawpaw seedlings increases the rate of pollination, but they still might require a gardener to provide sex therapy with a pollen-coated paintbrush.

Overall, they don't easily lend themselves to mass production; pawpaws are definitely a fruit for the backyard enthusiast. Ask a gardener or forager when they first learned about this forgotten treasure and they're likely to remember the moment as vividly as the moon landing or a national tragedy. I encountered my first pawpaw as a teenager, splashed amongst the pages of a flimsy mail order catalog that also offered items like turquoise blue roses and two-story tall potted geraniums.

A few years later, I met Chris Sermons when we were both invited to spend the weekend at a friend's cottage in Black Mountain, North Carolina. While our friends behaved like proper somethings—getting drunk in the cabin porch rocking chairs—Chris and I geeked out exploring and identifying all the native plants. The conversation turned to pawpaws, and I was excited and jealous to learn Chris had them growing at his family farm.

Still, it meant they weren't a myth and my interest in them was rekindled. Production really took off in when his family planted 2, asparagus crowns.

Chris has continued to experiment with unusual foods like pawpaws, ground nuts Apios americana , and Egyptian walking onions. On most farms, the annual crops are tilled under at the end of the season, but perennials can't be treated this way since they take time to establish.

Chris quickly noticed that it was easier to work with nature than fight against it and began researching alternative ways to manage his farm. Chris tells me he purchased his original pawpaws from Woodlanders nursery in as forage for deer and other wildlife. Only the ripe fruit of the pawpaw is interesting to wildlife, so the young trees don't need to be caged for protection.

If mammals including humans consume the unripe fruit, seeds, leaves, or stems of pawpaw trees, acetogenins in these parts of the plant cause what can be kindly referred to as gastric distress. Gardeners looking for deer and even goat proof plants should consider growing pawpaws, but recognize that the sweet, fallen fruit is fair game for deer, foxes, opossums, and raccoons. The stunning zebra swallowtail butterfly Eurytides marcellus will eat the leaves as a caterpillar, but never in quantities that hurt the tree.

Chris says that pawpaws are an excellent tree to use in forest farming, a growing technique that mimics a natural forest ecosystem to reduce work and increase yields. Each organism in a forest garden is chosen for its ability to integrate with other species, providing all the system's needs. For example, pawpaws might be chosen as an understory tree in a planned forest with walnut trees as the taller canopy species.

Walnuts produce a natural herbicide called juglone that doesn't affect the pawpaw, making them good companions. This forest section may include other productive deer or goat resistant specimens in the vine, shrub, herb, and mushroom layers. To manage weeds and fertilize, goats could be allowed to graze under the trees on a rotational basis. During the pawpaw's bloom, the goat manure would serve an additional function of attracting the flies needed for the pawpaw's pollination.

Chris's original pawpaws are unimproved wild specimens that produce seedy but delicious fruit. More recently, he also added named varieties that have been selected over the last 25 years by breeder Neil Peterson for uniformly large fruit, fewer seeds, excellent texture, and superb flavor. Although pawpaws are starting to show up seasonally at farmers markets in late summer, Chris says his limited harvests are currently only available as an introduction to worthwhile native foods for Bio-Way's CSA shareholders.

He enjoys educating customers. Over tea, Chris is excited to tell me about Bio-Way's forest shiitake log production, ways the farm uses weeds, the plants being grown in the micronursery, and plans for the honeybee apiary. His cabin is spartan and reflects his interests— a simple arrangement of Native American artifacts scavenged from the soil, back issues of Permaculture Activist magazine, agricultural textbooks, field guides, a loyal canine, and an excellent window view. The conversation turns to a forgotten experimental pawpaw orchard from the s and Chris's disappointment that an old trial planting near Washington, DC has been destroyed.

Chris says it has taken a while for Americans to notice pawpaws as a native treasure, but people are starting to clue in. One upstate resident who is no stranger to pawpaws is County Extension agent Danny Howard. Danny has a home orchard that boasts around a dozen mature, improved pawpaw specimens. Over the years, wild selections have been collected and named, and many of these cultivars cultivated varieties are now available through commercial nurseries as asexually propagated grafted stock.

In its ideal native habitat, pawpaw is characteristically found in the deeper, rich soils of river-bottom woodlands, growing in the shade as an understory tree. Because of root suckering, it usually forms clumps or thickets. Its leaves are long, drooping, dark green, and turn a brilliant yellow in the fall.

The fruit a true berry may weigh up to a pound, is oblong to cylindrical in shape, one to six inches long, and one to three inches in diameter. It has a strong floral and fruity aroma and its flesh is creamy textured, usually bright yellow to orange in color. Typical of its tropical family, the flavor of pawpaw is best described as richly complex, a mixture of papaya, banana, mango, and pineapple.

Flavor can vary greatly among selections, with sweetness and minimal aftertaste characteristics defining a high-quality cultivar. The crop is well adapted to the Eastern U.

It is relatively free of insects and diseases. Pawpaw is adapted to humid temperate zone growing conditions. This is a low chill requirement compared to other tree fruit species apples to 1, hours , and once met, the trees will begin to flower early in the spring. From 30 to 35 inches of rainfall is needed annually, with the majority falling in the spring and summer. Contrary to popular belief, pawpaw performs best in full-sun exposure.

As a food source, pawpaw exceeds apple, peach, and grapes in vitamin, mineral, amino acid, and food energy values. The current and primary market for fruit is as a fresh product in farmers markets and other direct sales outlets.

In Kentucky, various entrepreneurs are utilizing pawpaw as a local cuisine item for restaurants and in frozen custard and ice cream products.