They should be fine in a pot for at least 2 years. 

If you buy paw paw seedlings from a commercial seedling grower they mechanically cut the taproot when the trees are young and still in the ground that makes them easier to transplant but it also makes them easier to grow in a pot for a longer time the secondary roots won't coil quite as bad as a long tap root.

I have a Fairchild-zimmerman and a mango coming here in a few weeks, I am pretty sure they are bareroot so my fingers are crossed, but they are grafted, 2-3 feet tall and from what I am reading I shouldn't need any sun protection for them?  If they are Bareroot I am guessing the soaking is needed for them as well, any other tips you guys have had experience that could add to success?

Update:

The mold was probably from some residual sugars left on the seeds. Washing them well should take care of it, but I had plenty of moldy seeds germinate just fine for me. It was a green mold, and I figured it was just the Trichoderma I added to the mix, but compost should have mostly beneficial microorganisms as well. White mold, or fungi would be a really bad sign though. Good luck!

Actually, it could well have been a fungus. at any rate, it was white and fuzzy.

White + fuzzy = bad

Good call Ken.

I thought I'd update this post with shots of a couple of my seedlings. Several fizzled out but I have four that seem very healthy. With regular water they seem to tolerate Tucson's climate just fine.

 

 

They are beautiful, Ken! How old are they?

Thanks, Susan--they were planted in the spring of 2012. Growth rates were quite variable, mostly ranging from two to four feet, but one appears to be a natural dwarf of just a few inches, although apparently healthy. Here's a shot of the tallest and the smallest (circled); both are the same age:

 

Impressive Ken,

When you started a interest in Pawpaw I doubted they would like your climate, but they look fine. Are these from the seeds I sent you several years back?

Hi Phil,
No, I didn't know the best way to plant the seeds at that time, and so put all of yours directly into the ground, where they either rotted or critters ate them. These were seeds from 'mango' and likely pollinated by 'Overleese' that I got the following year from guy on GardenWeb, who said to germinate them indoors and plant them as soon as I saw the root tip start to emerge. That worked great, and nearly all of them came up.

I have some about the same age, Ken, but they have always been in pots and are only a fraction of the size yours are.

It will be interesting to see whether they take off once you get them into the ground.

Hi all,
I just stumbled across this post this morning over coffee - I am in deep south, Biloxi , MS and have been trying to grow paw paw for about 4 years - starting with a single small nursery tree and a couple of seedlings from a friend in Shreveport Lousiana.  One tree flowered fore the 1st time this season.
I started some seeds last winter and most of them sprouted.
I am interested in grafting and have some experience on other species - but have been told that multiple grafts on the same paw paw tree don't do well and the root stock will eventually overpower the graft - i.e. all rootstock branches must be eliminated for the graft to survive?  I would love to learn how to make a paw paw with multiple varieties.
Also - how do you guys/gals find your pawpaw scions and are there any recommendations for certain varieties.
I know I asked a lot of questions - just excited to find this discussion
TJ 

I haven't actually grafted any pawpaw yet. My seedlings are from selected trees and I expect them to be very good. Pawpaws improve with each generation from selected stock. Cliff England (England's Nursery and Orchard) sells pawpaw scion wood but he won't have anymore until winter of 15/16. As far as grafting goes, I don't know any reason why you can't graft several varieties onto the same tree. I don't know why the rootstock would over grow the scions - you would just have to keep the rootstock cut back.

I haven't grafted any pawpaws yet either, but what Susan said makes sense to me. If you graft multiple varieties onto the same tree, it seems like you ought to be able to keep things balanced with careful pruning.

I will probably buy scions from Cliff England if he has what I'm looking for--I think he sells them for about $6 per stick, plus shipping. I also want to get a Shenandoah, but it's a patented variety that Cliff England doesn't offer--so to graft it onto one of my seedlings I'll have to purchase a potted plant from an authorized nursery and sacrifice it for the scion. Kind of a hassle and more expensive, but I think it will do much better in my yard if I graft it onto a healthy seedling with a normal tap root than if I tried to establish a small, container-grown plant in my climate & soil. My big question at this point is whether it's superior enough to the many excellent, non-patented varieties to justify the extra effort and cost.

Ken, I was told that all of the Peterson pawpaws are from a Overleese/Sunflower cross. I bought several of them as bare root plants several years ago but ended up losing all except Susquahanna and Allegany. I will never buy bare root pawpaws again but I have actually had very good luck with small potted plants as long as I get them planted. I really like some of the genetics of Cliff's special pawpaw seed and I have some in the fridge waiting to be planted. I think they may produce even better plants than the Peterson pawpaws. I highly recommend them.

Can anyone else give us updates on their Pawpaw plantings?

Should be some fruit hanging now.

All of my trees are still too young to have fruit although about five trees had blooms this year.

I saw a number of posting on wild Paw Paws.  I recently found some on the property that our company owns.  Actually I found a lot of Paw Paw groves.  I went out today and found at least a dozen fruit about 3" long.  Here are my questions.  Fruit production seems low for so many trees but they are in fairly shaded are.  I have found at least 7 or 8 patches where I assume the tree's spread by runner?  I have by no means exhausted the area and I see many other patches in the distance but my lunch hour isn't long enough to check them all out..yet.
The trees are trees with the oldest easily being 15-20 foot tall.

Here's my questions:
1.  There are lone seedling? in the woods that are about 6-8" in height.  Do you think they could be transplanted?
2.  Where the tree's did fruit there are clusters of 4-5 fruits.  Is that normal?
3.  The size seems good to me.  Around here Paws Paws ripen in August-Sept. and the fruit seems big already.  Is this a normal size?

Next time I am out I will bring my camera so I can take more pictures.  The trees seem really vigorous so I am thinking they would be excellent root stock if nothing else.

I'm hoping that maybe I can to some comparison tasting with some of the named varieties to see how they stack up.

 Pawpaws spread by suckers and they are difficult to transplant. I have heard of people doing it but I wonder if the trees are still alive the following spring. I have several large groves in the forest behind my house that never fruit - I think they are all just suckers from the original tree. If you have large fruit on a wild tree, and good clusters, I would mark the stems incase you want to go back and collect some scion wood this winter for grafting. You can also save the seed from good fruit and store it in the fridge until spring.

I have always been told that transplanting is extremely difficult. I'm assuming they were transplanting dormant trees. My limited experience says different. I have a friend that lives near Marriana FL. He has several named varieties unfortunately the tags have long since vanished. To the point....I visited him two years ago in the Spring and I dug up four trees about three feet tall. They were all root suckers. As we were leaving I spotted a root sucker about twelve feet tall and dug it too. I tried to dig about eighteen inches around the trunk to get a root ball. I ended up bare rooting all of them due to his sandy soil. Threw all of them in the back of my truck with only some garbage bags protecting the roots and drove back to Pensacola. Planted them all in my PawPaw patch the next day. The results....I lost one of the smaller ones. I expected to lose the tall one since I mangled the root ball digging it but it has established itself nicely and even had a few blooms this year. Maybe I just got lucky but i'll take lucky any day!

I have sourced trees from four different sources and geographical areas. I should have good cross pollination. One was successfully grafted with Arkansas #9. I am looking to graft more varieties to some of the other trees. I hope to have fruit in the next two years.

Thanks, Charles! That is really great to hear. I might try to dig up some this spring.

Charles, were they still dormant when you dug them up? How early in the spring was it? Please let us know how they do over the winter. The problem that I always have had with bare root pawpaws was that they seemed to die over the winter after looking good spring, summer, and fall.

I thought I'd revive this old thread to give an update on how my pawpaws are doing in Tucson. I planted several pre-germinated seeds directly in the ground in 2012. Some died, but I still have six trees--two are very small, two are a couple of feet tall, and two are between 5 and 6 feet. Both larger trees bloomed this year (about six flowers each), and after being naturally pollinated by flies, are starting to set a few fruit. I don't know if the fruit will be able to fully mature on such small trees, but it's an encouraging start!

start!