Like you, I recently bought a potted,grafted Shenandoah 'tiny' plant and transpotted it into a bigger pot, where it has grown OK with 2 small branches developing full-sized healthy leaves. An identicle-looking tiny grafted KSU Atwood from the same seller that was packaged the same, growing in the same kind of nursery pot, repotted by me the same into the same kind of tall pot on the same day in the same soil mix with the same fertilizing and the same watering and the same Sunlight....never had one bud on the tiny scion grow out. It's rootstock sent out a couple shoots, but even these declined and died. I have used Miracle Grow, Super Thrive, and some granular fertilizer to nourish both. My conclusion is that the tiny root system is not reliable to support the tiny grafted scion. I have more confidence in clipping off the scion and regrafting it to a mature paw paw with a developed root system. I do not know what the patent restrictions dictate, but if I am going to invest $$ on a valued scion that is only being kept alive by an immature, very vulnerable rootstock, that is not a safe bet to make again. It would be a whole lot better taken care of if it was grafted onto a "Mango paw paw that has been in the ground for several years and is 8 or 9 feet tall". I wish that paw paw roots on tiny plants were as eager to grow and hardy as,.. say,...mulberries. Maybe that would be the best focus of additional paw paw research. Vigorous hardy rootstocks.

KSU wants to develop rootstocks, but hasn't had any luck propagating them clonally, so all paw paw rootstocks are currently grown from seed.

For a home grower, I'd say your idea is a good one. I started a few dozen paw paws from seed lat year, and there's quite a difference in vigor among them, os it might be worth it to start several seedlings for each tree that you want.

Alex

I can't draw on any first hand experience to answer your question because I always remove the flower buds from the scionwood so that all the nutrients that feed the graft go to the vegetative buds. But I would say that since only a small fraction of pawpaw flower buds end up producing fruit even on a mature tree, it would be unlikely just on that basis that such grafts would pay off with fruit. Another thing is that more often than not in my experience pawpaws do not fruit the first year they bloom, so if your trees are set to bloom for the first time, they may not be ready to bear fruit of any kind yet. And then there's the issue of grafting Neil Peterson's patented pawpaws against his stated requests.

I will say that spring chip grafting onto the 8 ft Mango can work without needing to severely prune the tree. I've had about a 50% success rate this year grafting these larger pawpaws. Previous attempts using mostly bark grafts had all failed.

"Maybe that would be the best focus of additional paw paw research. Vigorous hardy rootstocks."

You were reading my mind yesterday. I was viewing a large, healthy, fruiting seedling pawpaw in a relatively small pot and contemplating all the others of its cohort having a range of performance. It would be hard to get enough for vast orchards, but probably not too hard to produce hundreds of select rootstocks per year if root cuttings could be reliably rooted and leafed out.

Once while repotting tall seedlings or small saplings I came across a pawpaw with little sign of a taproot and more an abundantly branched root system, which would seem to have some advantages in horticultural use.

I am mystified by the stated difficulty in cloning rootstock. I would think that a plant that root suckers like pawpaw does would be able to be propagated from root cuttings. I occasionally noticed leafy regrowth a few weeks after I broke off a taproot that had grown through the bottom of a pot when I moved the pot.

>And then there's the issue of grafting Neil Peterson's
>patented pawpaws against his stated requests.

That's a fair point, but I wouldn't really be propagating the tree, since the bud would only yield a one time flower. It wouldn't do anything after that AFAIK. I'm just anxious to taste the fruit!

Alex

At the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association meeting this year, a question was asked about using flower buds for chip budding. The experts replied that there is usually a vegetative bud behind the flower bud--look closely and you will see it. If you want to encourage the vegetative bud to grow, you would break off the fruit bud. So it appears that Neal P would probably not approve.

We have been growing pawpaws for about 30 years, and the above mentioning of clonal root stocks caused me to write. I put out 100 seedlings, after growing them for 2 years in a nursery setting. The seed came from my own grafted Mango, Shenandoah, Overleese and Pa. Golden trees. I selected about 5 of those 100 as being best for fruit. Really small bad ones I cut down, then kept removing others that were the then weakest. I have maybe 50 left.

The amount of suckering a pawpaw tree varies as much as any other trait does. Some trees sucker like crazy with no severe pruning needed. One of my better trees has never suckered yet, though I wish it would, so I could remove that to an isolated spot with another for breeding reasons. The point is, the tree(s) I have, that have buried the mother in suckers, so that you can't get near it (25?- 6ft tall +/-) Are the base for the clonal rootstock project.

You would have 25 starts that you know are the most aggressive, let grow some years, and cut down to just above ground.

It would naturally send up a bunch more fresh suckers. That tissue would be the most likely to produce something aggressive enough to grow from root cuttings. In theory.