7 YEARS LATER | Pawpaw Fruit

All right you guys, this is Ross. Today we actually have really our first real pawpaws. These are pawpaws that I grew myself and planted these trees here that we're looking at seven years ago. We have a Pennsylvania golden and a mango and I have to say it was worth the wait. I don't think it would normally take this long assuming you plant your trees in more sunlight. This is a extremely shady spot here right underneath two shade trees. I thought when I first planted these that that's what they needed and that's just the wrong kind of thinking. In fact you would really prefer them to be in full sun and they'll do a lot better. They'll produce more fruit, they'll produce earlier, you don't have to wait seven years. So take my advice, learn from my mistake, don't listen to every single person on the internet. It was worth the wait though because I find that the flavor of these, I don't know, guys I've had a lot of pawpaw. I haven't had a ton but I would say I've had a much more than the average person and these fruits here are beyond any pawpaw I've ever tried. This is a variety here called mango and I'm telling you this stuff here is incredible. This tastes better than a banana, really better than any banana I've ever had. It is quite tropical in the Enona family. For those of you who don't know what pawpaw is, they're related to cherimoyas, adamoyas, but you can grow them here in as far as like I think even zone four maybe you might be able to get away with it. I know in zone five for sure and they have large seeds in them and my fruits this year probably a bit smaller than they normally will be and you know what the trees also just even though it's in year seven still getting established, it probably I would imagine maybe by year 10 I will finally realize the full potential of these trees or at least the the somewhat level of maturity of these trees that's respectable. So I'm probably never going to touch these. I'm probably never going to dig them up, never going to move them. I think I'll leave these trees here for as long as possible and keep coming back year after year to always have myself really tasty pawpaw. Let me try it here. I don't know why exactly this pawpaw is so much better than any of the others I've tried. It could be that they're perfectly ripe, picked at the perfect time. I mean that's a huge part of growing fruit. It could be that this has been a drought year but there's almost no bitterness in this. This is all sweet, really good banana flavor to it that is obviously quite different but it's so rich. The texture is rich, the sweetness is rich, the flavor is rich. It feels so satisfying to eat this and there is a little bit of bitterness in that aftertaste but I'm telling you it's almost none and in most of the pawpaws I've eaten it's quite a lot in some cases and this one has a better texture. This one has better sweetness, better flavor and less bitterness. I don't know why exactly that is but this fruit, this tree is incredible. Actually I think the one we've been harvesting, oh no, yeah I think this was a mango but I have some PA Goldens here that are also ripe. I don't know if they're perfectly ripe just yet but I may have to wait a few days before I get them perfectly ripe. There is one back here that we will get to harvest that will be perfectly ripe on the tree and I mean what I'm doing is some of them obviously are on the ground when you come out here in the morning but hopefully they don't fall off the tree. They stay on the tree for as long as possible and then you come out here and they come right off the tree and I'll show you the stem itself comes right off the tree or the part that attaches to the fruit comes right off of the fruit and so it's kind of like I like to think of it maybe as like when you're harvesting apples or pears when you give them a slight lift they should come right off with very little ease and that's been my short experience here harvesting these things and that's when I think we should you should be probably harvesting them. Now if they're on the ground I think something can happen right the winds critters but most of the time at least so far in my experience the ones that fell to the ground there was two on the ground this morning they were not ripe nearly as ripe as the ones I'm taking off the tree myself so just because it's on the ground doesn't mean it's more ripe I think is my point but I only have at this point here mango to share on video and then the PA golden will have to be another time but let me show you guys some of the fruits that are on there one of the keys to getting the the trees established was actually mulch so if you're not mulching your trees that's a big mistake and I I have been putting down mulch after mulch after mulch fertilizer comfrey you name it I've been trying so hard to get these trees established and to grow water is also critical especially in these younger years I think they're worth watering early on and they're definitely worth mulching if you're going to mulch anything which you should be mulching pretty much everything this is uh definitely one to mulch so uh yeah here's some fruits in the middle get some down there I would say we probably I was surprised I thought maybe some of these would are going to fall off the tree and I hope maybe that we didn't have too many fruits on these trees and we didn't have like uh maybe an overbearing problem and maybe it'll be a biennial next year but you know there's some pretty darn good fruits that if I touch these they're not exactly soft just yet but you can tell they're getting softer they're changing color from what they were now if I were to give one of these a little bit of a twist it would come off but you don't want to do that I'm going to wait till they almost turn a little bit more yellow now this one here is definitely getting softer than the other one we just looked at but um this part right here will come right off if I kind of give this a little bit of a little bit of a tug and nothing happened so the same thing can be said for this part up here that attaches to the branch and so here's an idea right here where there was two two fruits on this stem but these had fallen off and probably because of a critter or something that got to them there's another fruit there in the center the mango seems to be an earlier variety and people have been getting pawpaws even only five minutes away from me for like months for at least a month I should say which leads me to believe that it's just a lot has to do with this shadier spot that they're in they wouldn't ripen this late it is September 20th around the 15th we started to get some fruits but obviously I think if they were in more sun and it does obviously depend on the variety we'd probably get some earlier fruits but in general I cannot complain although I've waited seven years so maybe I can complain these are incredible this these fruits here are insanely good I hope the ones that I picked or the ones I found on the ground this morning that are not ripe and didn't hang on the tree as long as they should have will be as ripe I imagine they won't and they won't be as good but so far these mango pawpaws I'm telling you best pawpaw I ever had not even close so I would say out of all the fruits I've grown this one's right up there guys in terms of you know how good it tastes and some people I do want to mention one last thing having a little bit of an allergy problem today guys but I do want to mention one last thing in that some people have been uh reporting and obviously there's some science to kind of back this up that the there's a chemical in the ananas I think it's called anona say or uh man what's the chemical in these fruits but essentially you can find it in the skin the plant itself the fruits uh probably the seeds and so a lot of the plant you don't want to eat obviously we're eating the fruits but a lot of people say if you eat these fruits it's going to potentially lead to parkinson's or other neurological neuro system nervous system problems and because it's because of that chemical in the in the anona family I think it's anona say I'm not sure how to pronounce it but you can find it out easily it's just something to be aware of I don't think it's worth really for me at least worrying about until we actually have some better science to support something one way or the other and uh you know there's a lot of weird things that went around uh talking about how oh well this pawpaw guy has parkinson's so clearly you know it must be giving people parkinson's you know it's just it's just crazy I think everything in moderation guys maybe there's a plant chemical in here that's not good but maybe there's a one a plant chemical in here that's great you know I mean in general there are foods throughout nature that are extremely beneficial for us and there's some that are poison so uh we just have to be careful and so just as a general um statement you know I'm going to be eating as many of these as I can and I'm not really going to worry about it now if I start to have problems like I'm getting brain fog or I'm getting other weird neurological problems after eating these well I'm going to be cognizant of that and I'm going to try to be aware and then maybe even limit or you know um not consume these fruits but you know things like wheat as an example I don't eat so uh you know there there's going to be some level though I'm sure of everything that some people can handle and some people can't so for me I'm rather sensitive to gluten I don't have celiac but certainly it bothers me to enough of an extent that it's just not worth eating it and so if pawpaw ends up being the case which so far there's absolutely no indicator of that then um you know that'll just have to be the case but until then I would just grow some pawpaw I don't I don't really see the big worry about all of it it's an amazing fruit guys reliable uh you can't get them in the store waited seven years one of the happiest days in my fruit growing growing career so uh we'll talk to you guys soon all right hit that subscribe button we'll see you guys for the next one take care