Snowy Yard #ThursdayTreeLove

Weren't we just dreaming about spring?  Weren't we just (on Sunday) enjoying almost 70 degree (21C) weather in March?  Wasn't the ground just (finally) bare?  

Well, nature took care of that yesterday.  Here's what it looked like mid-afternoon. 

The tree closest to the camera (with glops of wet snow on it) is a pawpaw, a tree I started from seed years ago from the one time I've eaten a pawpaw in the last 30 years or so.  I got one seedling from my experiment and didn't intend to plant it there but the seed had other plans.  

The pawpaw is a native tree to the United States.  The fruit is one you either love to eat or not but are not easy to find, unless you are fortunate enough to know someone who cultivates them or if you have land where they grow wild.

So far the tree hasn't flowered (I think they need to be 10 years old to flower, so maybe this year or next?)  and my understanding is, they aren't self pollinating so I probably will never get fruit.  But the birds like the tree.  And the tree doesn't mind the globs of snow.

Spring will get here eventually but now I'm inpatient.

Joining Parul at Happiness and Food for #ThursdayTreeLove.

A Thankful Friday and Paw Paw Update

Thank you, readers, for making the daily posts I write an enjoyable experience.  I appreciate each and every one of you when you stop by, and when you comment. Reading each comment is like opening up a little gift.

So, before I launch into a little story on how one of my readers helped me with a problem, I want to ask you all a favor:

What would you like me to write about in the coming weeks?  I like to write about what appeals to me each day.  But, what do YOU want to see? Gardening? More pictures?  How-To's?  Recipes? (I don't cook, but my spouse loves to cook.) More photos of upstate New York?

I will take your suggestions and see what I can do with them.

And now, a shout out to reader Howard Giles.  On Tuesday, I blogged about three paw paw plants we had germinated this spring.  My spouse and I had saved seeds from a paw paw purchased last fall from a locavore store, stratified them, and planted them this spring in pots.

The paw paw grows wild in portions in the United States and I remembered them from living years ago in rural Arkansas.  Their fruit tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana, and, indeed, they are a temperate zone cousin of various tropical fruits.

It was a nice project, but now frost was coming, and I needed to know how to keep the seedlings alive.  I don't have the room to grow them on my property.

Howard Giles to the rescue - he commented and suggested I contact an extension service if we had one.

Cornell Extension is a wonderful resource - one I don't use enough.  (And, dear readers, if you have an extension service in your area - I'm confident yours is just as wonderful.) I kicked myself.


Then, I did what he suggested - I contacted our local Cornell extension service.  And within a few hours, I had my answer from one Linda Swoboda.   I want to pass her advice along:

"I would suggest that you transfer these small trees into a larger pot, 2 or 3 times as big as they are in now, with good soil and sink the pots into the ground in a shaded area outside.  Full sun, even winter sun is hard a young pawpaw trees.  Water them in well. The roots will continue to develop and grow all winter.  The leaves will drop soon, so don't worry too much about what is eating them.  It could be a slug - check under the pots to see if they are hiding there in the daylight hours. [I didn't find any.] In the spring the trees can be transplanted to their permanent location.  However, I have read that in order to get fruit in the future, 2 unrelated pawpaw trees need to cross pollinate.  So these seedling siblings will not be fertile - you will need another tree of a different source."

She even sent me a couple of links, which I read.  Thank you, Linda!

I'm disappointed that these three plants, if they survive, won't be able to cross pollinate.  So, no paw paws are in our future.  But we are going to do what she suggests.

And then, next spring, I need to find a forever home for these trees, because, according to my reading, they need to be planted in their forever home next spring.

So that is the story of my paw paws.  Next spring, I'll see if they made it.

And again, thank you to my readers for making this possible.  And now, I look forward to your suggestions. 

Save My Paw Paw Plants!

It's that dreaded time of year, when it is time to say goodbye to the garden.

Saturday morning, portions of Johnson City, New York (near to where I live) experienced frost.  At my house, it got down to an unexpected  35 degrees F (1.6 Celsius).  We had not expected it to get that cold, never mind cold enough to get a frost.

But my guardian angel was watching over my garden, apparently, and my plants are still alive and not frost damaged - for now.

My spouse and I have been busy doing all our fall preparations and we should be nearly set - except for one thing.

Paw Paws 9-21-14

Our paw paws.

These are two of the three surviving plants we started from seed. 

What are paw paws, anyway?

Paw paws are a native American fruit. They taste like a cross between bananas and mangoes.  They grew wild in Arkansas, where we lived nearly 30 years ago, and that is where I first ate them.  Last year, a Binghamton, NY resident brought some paw paws to Old Barn Hollow, a locavore store in Binghamton - I bought one, ate one for the first time in nearly 30 years, and saved the seeds. 

Of the seeds, we got almost perfect germination although it took a long time - and only three plants are left.

They don't look as good as they did on September 21 - slugs or something else are eating the leaves.  And, with the frost, these trees should go dormant.  We shouldn't be ovewintering these indoors, and we have no where to plant these.  We can't overwinter them in pots outdoors.  They are marginally hardy in this area, and really need to be in the ground.

So, a dilemma.

What should I do to save my paw paws?

Do my gardening friends have any suggestions?

Summer Ramblings - And Then There Was One

An update on my gardening project for this year - attempting to grow paw paws, a native American fruit, from seed.

It will be a challenge.

Last year, when I found paw paws for sale at a locavore store, I bought one, saved the seeds, and kept them in moist peat for the winter.  Then, come spring, we planted the large seeds, one to a pot.

Would they grow? They sat and sat, with no sign of germination.

I thought I had failed.

Then, in late July, I found that all but one of the seeds I had planted were germinating.  Such excitement!

Since then, I watched the germination.  Each seed would rise to the surface, pushed by an emerging stem.  The stem would emerge from the seed, and then stand up to the world, leafless.

Then the leaves appeared.

Five out of six seeds had germinated. 

But one of the heavy seeds broke off the head.  Then there were four.

Yesterday, the leaves of one plant were lying, broken off the stem, dead.  I couldn't figure out why.  The stem remained.

But today, two more plants' leaves were broken.  Obviously, something was after them.

This is the one survivor, and I hope it can thrive in the house until it's a little older.

As for the remaining stems, I'll just have to hope they can recover.  These are not fully cultivated trees, after all (I'm guessing).  Maybe they are tough.

But nature is not always kind.

Hace you ever had a project that you did "just for the heck of it"?

Will a Watched Seed Germinate?

Before I dig in (in a manner of speaking) into today's subject, I wanted to thank everyone who commented yesterday on my "Never Too Late to Learn" post. My dear readers, you are the best.  Thank you for your comments.

And now, I have something else to be thankful for. 

Today's subject is the Paw Paw, which I blogged about last November.

The Paw Paw is a native American fruit.  I had made their acquaintance in the early 1980's when living in rural Arkansas. Where I lived in Arkansas is a USDA plant hardiness zone 7a (meaning normal minimum temperatures of 0 to 5 degrees F).

Last November, I found paw paw fruit at a Binghamton, New York localvore store.  It had been grown right in Binghamton, zone 5b (-10 to -15 degrees).  Obviously, this man had succeeded in growing them in our area.  I bought one fruit and kept its six seeds in the fridge all winter, in damp peat moss.  In spring, I planted the seed, one per small container, and kept on my back porch.

I had been about to give up hope, when, earlier this month, I saw signs of germination.  This is what the most advanced seed looked like on July 20.  The shell of the seed is covering the leaves, the seedling rooted in the ground.  Each day the seed husk held higher and higher.

July 23.  At this point, five of the six seeds have germinated.

Today, July 24, the seedling stands proudly, straight as a soldier.  I am thankful it's gotten this far.

In some ways, this is like watching a chick hatch out of an egg.  Hatching is a longer process than you may think, as the chick chips away at the eggshell's inside with its "egg tooth". You wonder, until the moment that egg cracks enough for the chick to fall out, if the chick will succeed or not.

Now I will be in suspense until the leaves escape from the seed husk.  I know I can't hurry it along, any more than you can hurry a chick breaking out of its egg.

Will my seedlings succeed?  I can't wait to find out.

The Mad Plant Grower

No, I'm not a plant scientist, or a hybridizer.  Rather, I can see myself in my retirement, trying to grow things that are a bit out of the normal sphere of gardening.

I'm not ready to retire yet, nor is my spouse.  But, we are trying some of that experimentation.

Some experiments succeed.  Some fail.

A success?  Growing ginger, something we never thought would grow in our zone 5b garden in the Binghamton area of upstate New York, until we saw a vendor in the Ithaca, New York farmers market selling young, locally grown ginger.  Then, someone in our Otsiningo Park Farmers Market sold it.  So we tried growing a pot of ginger (from roots purchased in an Asian food store) last year, and got a marvelous harvest.

This year, we are trying again.  The ginger started to germinate on June 27.  When it is further along, I will give you an update.

A failure? Our pawpaws.  Last year, we located some in a localvore store, and stratified the seeds in the refrigerator.  We then planted in small pots.

Nothing ever happened.

We aren't giving up, but I don't think we have a success.  Hopefully we will be able to try again this fall. 

Have you tried any experiments with plants?  How did it work out?

Sustainable Saturday - Stalking the Wild Pawpaw

My pawpaw hunt has ended with success.

For the first time in nearly 30 years, I've tasted one.  But first, let's back up a little.

Pawpaws are a wild fruit, about the size of your fist,  They grow on trees and are pollinated by flies - not bees. The trees are not bothered by pests. The taste is hard to describe - many people describe it as a cross between a banana and a mango. Back 30 years ago, I had never had a mango, so my memory described it as a "banana on steroids".  They are highly nutritious, and high in antioxidants.

I first encountered the pawpaw growing wild in rural Northwest Arkansas, in the early 1980's.  I saw a pawpaw tree (above) growing in downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas in August, during my first visit since leaving in 1986, and those pawpaw memories came flying back.

Thomas Jefferson grew pawpaws at Monticello, and they grow wild in the Washington, DC area. 

You can also buy cultivated varieties, some of which would be hardy where I live in upstate New York. 

A lot of this is the work of one man, and the story of the pawpaw is getting to be quite fascinating..

And then I read a local farmers market report saying pawpaws were being sold, in limited quantities, right here in the Binghamton area.

Last Saturday, my spouse and I walked into our localvore store, Old Barn Hollow (in walking distance of downtown Binghamton) and this sight greeted us:

They had been supplied by a man in Binghamton who had a pawpaw tree, but this was his final harvest for the year.  So, we bought one of the smaller ones to try out.  As I recalled, I wasn't that crazy about the taste. But, tastes change with age. Maybe my palette had matured.

These fruits need to be soft and more brownish before you eat them, so we let it sit a few days.  We could have let it sit another day or so, but the fruit flies had discovered it.  So, it was time to test our pawpaw out.

This is the pawpaw, cut open.  The seeds are not edible, as far as I know.

We took the soft flesch and scooped it out of the skin, and ate it just like that.

Verdict: I still think they taste like a banana on steroids.  I still tasted the slightly unpleasant undertone, but it wouldn't prevent me from eating it.  It would be great baked into a pie, or even blended into a smoothie with strawberries.  So yes, I would eat one again, especially if it was one of a number of ingredients in a dessert.

Now as to those seeds - yes, we are going to try to germinate them.  More on that another time.

So, I really didn't have to stalk the wild pawpaw-but I would still love to find a wild pawpaw tree I could get fruit from.


Now if I could only find the wild persimmons I still remember from Arkansas.....