At this very moment, at the edge of the woodlands there is a delectable temperate-zoned "tropical" fruit in the food forest.
Join me in the pawpaw patch! Learn to ID, harvest, eat, and grow this luscious treat.
Luscious Treat: Meet & Plant Pawpaw < click here to view this video
Pawpaw, scientifically called Asimina triloba of the Annonaceae family, is the largest native fruit of eastern North America. Native to 26 states. Range: north to New York and southern Ontario, west to Texas and Nebraska and south to Florida. Grows best in USDA hardiness zones 5-8.
Look for pawpaw trees in woodlands, forest edges, bottomlands and permaculture gardens. They prefer well drained soil (although ours is in clayey soil).
Harvest
Fruit ripens in late summer through mid fall. Ripe fruit is soft to the touch, emits an alluring odor, and easily comes of the tree. Eat right away or store ripe fruit in fridge for 1 week or at room temp for 1-3 days. Don’t pick under ripe pawpaws or they won’t ripen. Under ripe is rock hard, no odor and does not easily fall off the tree.
After removing the inedible seeds and skin, eat raw or preserve fruit pulp in freezer which keeps for over a year.
Pawpaw flavor: divine, somewhat like a banana, peach, melon combo with a hint of vanilla; and custard like texture. Note: can have a slight bitter aftertaste.
Try pawpaw in recipes where you would use banana, mango, and even melon and peach. Use in smoothies, ice cream, cheesecake, mousse, savory sauces, etc.
Nutrition: mineral rich high in iron and magnesium. Per 3oz fruit 7 grams of iron; almost ½ of the RDA and 113 grams magnesium; 1/3 of the RDA.
Pawpaw ripeness: almost ripe on right, ripe in middle and very ripe on left.
Cultivation
USDA Hardiness zones 5-8. Soil PH 5–7. Needs at least 8 hours of light to produce fruit. Seedling trees may need protection from sunlight when young. Space tree center’s 10ft to 30ft apart for successful pollination. Tree height 20-30 feet. You need two genetically distinct trees for pollination, hence fruit. (2 seedlings or 2 different cultivars, clones can not pollinate each other). Plant fresh black seeds right away. Don’t let them dry out or they lose their viability.
Identification
Bark is gray to dark brown, thin and smooth or somewhat broken, note the lenticels. Its large leaf is 6”-12” long with an obovate shape which means egg shaped but with the fattest part toward the leaf tip; leaf tip pointy (acuminate). Leaf margin entire, no serrations. Leaves alternate up the branch. Crush and smell leaf; odor is strong almost burnt like. End bud is long without scales, dark-wooly hairy, with silky sheen at this stage.
Delectable Fruit: Identify, Harvest, & Plant Pawpaw! < click here to check the video
Wishing you delectable autumn days.
In gratitude,
Dina
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