I have posted some about pawpaws (Asimina triloba) before, but I haven't said a lot about them in detail. Pawpaws grow wild throughout much of the eastern, southern, and central U.S. Efforts to improve pawpaws and develop the species into a productive, domesticated, orchard crop have been made for decades. Some efforts have been much more organized and successful than others. If you are interested in pawpaws you should check out the work going on at:
Kentucky State: https://kysu.edu/academics/cafsss/pawpaw/
Neil Peterson's: https://www.petersonpawpaws.com/
My experience with pawpaws is that, here in Missouri, you have one of two things:
1) Wild pawpaws - relatively low production, smaller fruits, sometimes have 'off' flavors, some years they make no fruit, are relatively abundant in some areas, but are relatively scarce in others, generally un-maintained and growing in wooded areas (especially in the under story with partial to heavy shade).
2) Pawpaws grown as an orchard crop - often grafted trees, usually uniformly spaced in rows, can require some level of maintenance (but often less than other fruit crops in Missouri). Almost always in full (or almost full) sunlight.
There are also combinations of these. For example, you could graft wild pawpaw trees to cultivars that produce more and larger fruit. You could also graft young wild pawpaw trees so that they will produce fruit sooner. There are obstacles to attempting to turn wild pawpaw groves into orchards, but interestingly there is a history of doing this in Missouri with other crops, notably pecans. Missouri has many wild pecan groves where other trees species have been cut over the years to encourage the pecan trees to produce more nuts, and in some of these wild pecan groves now contain trees that growers have grafted that are more productive and/or disease resistant.
There are many differences between pecan and pawpaw trees, but the premise is the same. Find areas where there are wild pawpaw trees, thin out some of the other tree species, leave the pawpaw trees, and manage them for production. The advantage to this method is basically the same as it is for creating pecan groves, you can get production faster and it is possible to keep establishment costs lower. The trade-off is you may not have an ideal site, and you may never see the maximum production potential you would see if you picked and ideal site and planted the orchard there, spaced the trees at an ideal spacing, grafted only the most productive cultivars, etc.
I have done both of these at my farm and combinations of them. I have planted organized orchards of young pawpaw trees, I have unmanaged wild pawpaw stands, and I have managed and grafted wild stands of pawpaw trees. Basically this is the same thing I have with pecans as well (although the pawpaws take up much less space than pecan trees, which is great).
Here is a video of me talking about a small area I have grafted some cultivars onto wild pawpaw rootstocks.
Short pawpaw video
There are two things that make a lot of sense to me about pawpaw cultivation.
1) Low maintenance - For a FRUIT crop in Missouri. Pawpaws are more flexible in their site requirements than many other fruits. This does not mean you will get high yields on all sites (you will not). This does not mean you won't have problems on some sites, but it does mean that you can successfully grow pawpaws in areas you would never be able to grow a peach tree for example, or a grape vine (ex. in partial shade).
2) Profitability - If you have a market to sell your pawpaws, it can be quite lucrative. If you have no market to sell your pawpaws, then they probably won't be very lucrative. This concept is not unique to pawpaws, but it means that you need to plan at least a little before you are holding the fruit in your hand wondering what to do with it. There is often not a huge supply of pawpaws available (especially fresh) so if you can get them to people who want them you have a little more flexibility in your pricing (you are more of a price maker than a price taker, which is a good situation to be in).
Since costs of production can be relatively low, and prices attained for quality fruit can be high, the POTENTIAL exists to actually see some profit.
In the future I will make another post about some pawpaw cultivars I like and why I like them. There are quite a few out there right now. I will say 'Sunflower' is one of the cultivars I really like, but a full discussion of pawpaw cultivars is a post for another day.
