On Sunday and Monday of this week, we attended the Homesteading Life Conference in Hannibal Missouri. This is an annual event organized by Doug and Stacy, and both my son Ezekiel and I gave presentations. He talked on his landrace watermelon project, and I spoke on composting and Grocery Row Gardening.
It was an excellent event with lots of wonderful people – and the town of Hannibal is excellent. It’s the home town of Mark Twain so we spent Tuesday visiting his boyhood home and other sites from his life. We also got to see multiple original Normal Rockwell paintings at the Mark Twain Museum.
After that, however, we had a little more time so some of the older children and I walked around the shops of downtown. There we visited Lydia’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is a fantastically weird store. The owner restored paintings and had quite a bizarre collection of artifacts for sale.
Somehow, we ended up talking about gardening, and he mentioned growing pawpaws, and shared with me that a grove of wild pawpaws was located just a short distance away at Riverside Park, near the playground alongside a creek by the Mississippi. He also mentioned that he had found Native American artifacts in the area.
I thanked him and we walked back to our Air BnB, where I gathered up the whole family and took them to the park.
While Rachel watched most of the younger children at the playground, some of the older ones joined me on a hunt, both for arrowheads and pawpaws.
Though we didn’t find arrowheads, we did find lots of pawpaws:
Unfortunately, we were too early in the season, but I’m hoping we get enough ripening after the fact to give us viable seeds.
Pawpaw trees are a native North American tree species which is one of the few fruit trees to flower and fruit in the shade, making it a very good food forest species. If you live in a place with some shade, decent rainfall, and not super hot or super cold, pawpaw trees will probably fit into your garden.
More resources:
How to germinate pawpaw seeds: https://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/how-to-grow-pawpaws-from-seed/
Michael Judd’s FOR THE LOVE OF PAWPAWS:Â https://amzn.to/3YyVE5P
11 comments
Can I grow pawpaws in Pensacola? We have lots of shade, up on a hillside.
Lots of flies too…
Yes, you can. Both A. triloba and A. parviflora should do fine there.
Have you had success pruning them to keep them small like you would in a GRG?
I planted some paw paws in my middle Georgia back yard, and seven years later they are finally starting to produce. Unfortunately, I did not realize they would grow to be 20 feet tall, so I plan to do some pruning on a couple of them this winter to see how they do. I suspect they will be okay; a branch broke off one of them in a storm a couple of years ago, and the tree continued to thrive. Not only that, but I stuck the branch in the ground just for grins and it rooted.
I have not tried.
Love that you got so many pawpaws! I am hoping to attend the Ohio Pawpaw Festival this year and meet some other enthusiasts/get some pointers on growing them in pots on my patio. (Unfortunately I don’t have money to buy land but my patio is mostly shaded and close to a walnut. Perfect for pawpaw trees.)
I would like to get in touch with you to possibly trade som3 pawpaw seeds. I have collected around 1000 so far and there is still plenty to harvest from the patch I am gathering from. They are open pollinated from a patch containing 6 trees. I can tell from growth patterns, fruit shape, color, and taste that they are improved varieties however, I don’t know what varieties they are. I understand if you are not interested; I intend to germinate and sell them.
I would be happy to trade something for them. I have my doubts on the viability of the seeds in the fruits I gathered.
Have enjoyed all your adventures with Paws paws. But I had some thing awesome happen this morning! Had left an over ripe apple sitting on work table outside many days ago. I cut off the bad part. And found a sprouted seed!! Fed the chickens the good part & planted the apple sprout! Thought you’d get a chuckle out of my treasure.
Good find. I have done that too!