Miles Stephens from Davey's South Pittsburgh office talks with Doug over their fascination with the pawpaw tree.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about caring and transporting fruit trees, read our blog Guide to Transplanting Fruit Trees.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
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Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
Miles Stephens from Davey's South Pittsburgh office talks with Doug over their fascination with the pawpaw tree.
In this episode we cover:
To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.
To learn more about caring and transporting fruit trees, read our blog Guide to Transplanting Fruit Trees.
Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company
Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com.
Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!
[music]
Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.
Well, I'm very excited to have Miles Stephens, a district manager from the Pittsburgh area for the Davey Tree Expert Company on the show today because we're going to talk about something we both love more than just about anything. It's pawpaw trees. Miles, how are you? [chuckles]
Miles Stephens: Good, how are you doing, Doug?
Doug: I'm doing good. My journey with pawpaw trees starts 20 years ago. Just seeing them in a nursery catalog and wondering, I don't know what these are, but I'm going to plant some, and boy, a few years later when I started harvesting these amazing tropical fruits I was hooked, and I'm spreading the word. How did you get started on pawpaws? Then we'll talk all about what pawpaws are and everything we can think about pawpaws to talk about.
Miles: I've been at WVU Arboretum and pawpaws, I thought that was cool and never ran into them very much. Then, I'm checking how many years ago, I had a raccoon park. I'm trying to think if it was hunting or hiking, my son and I came across some grove. We're like, "What are these?" He says, "Oh, pawpaws." I started watching them to produce fruit, and it didn't happen. Then, I got a little more interested doing a little research on pawpaws. Then, I was at Tree Pittsburgh, had an event, and they were selling pawpaw trees, so I bought three. I guess the rest is history.
Doug: [laughs] No longing to do it or anything like that. You saw it when you were in college? Is that when you first saw them? At WVU?
Miles: Yes, first time I saw them. Yes. They had it down at the Arboretum, goes all the way down to the Mon River and down towards the bottom, and there were pawpaws.
Doug: Tell us a little bit about the pawpaw in general. What is this tree and why are guys like you and I nuts over them?
Miles: It's a sort of unique kind of tree. I said in some ways, it's tropical. It is the largest fruit berry. The fruit itself is the largest you're going to find in North America. There ends up being some history with it from time to time. Native Americans and our first president, it was his favorite dessert. That all sort of ties into being interesting. I'm sure early settlers used the fruit a good bit. From that point, being a history buff and liking trees, it dovetailed into doing more with it.
Doug: It's a native tree, and you need more than one, right?
Miles: Yes. For best results, yes.
Doug: Oh, you can get fruit without another one? I thought you had to have another one.
Miles: I think you can, but I think it's your best results. Like anything else, the pollination will be much more successful. You have multiple trees, you're going to attract more flies and whatnot to do the pollination. Plus you have more flowers and all that. All works into being superior to get pawpaws that way.
Doug: Talk about the pollination.
Miles: Yes, it's unique. Everybody thinks pollination you always think of honeybees and things like that. Well, that's not the case with pawpaws. They're pollinated by flies and so that makes it maybe a little more difficult at times to get the pollination. I remember you talked about some tricks because I wasn't getting anything and talked about, maybe, chicken parts and other things to help. I tried that.
I'm not sure I got a lot of success with that, but I think it was just a matter of the trees weren't mature. Now that they're more mature, I do get-- I am getting fruit. It is unique the fact that you don't think of flies, but what's attractive, so you have to have sort of stinky things there to attract the flies.
Doug: Yes, so the flowers are nondescript dark purple and have an odor to attract flies. Then one of the old stories was, and I don't know if this is true, is that Native Americans would hang dead squirrels in the tree to attract the flies. Whether that's true or not, who knows? Then with George Washington enjoying the fruit as his favorite dessert, I've always heard that he liked it refrigerated. People often, when I post that, they say like, "Well, how did he refrigerate it in 17-- In the 1700s? [chuckles] I guess they used to- because I love them refrigerated too -I guess they used to cut the lake, cut big blocks out of ice out of the lake, and then put them in a barn or something, so--
Miles: Right, they would cut the ice, big cubes of icecube them -huge piece of ice, and they'd put it in storehouses that were insulated and then you would get your-- You'd keep things refrigerated. Yes, I always heard he liked-- Chilled pawpaw was his favorite dessert, so I always thought that was sort of interesting. They're better when you keep them in the refrigerator, keep them chilled, then they're definitely-- Taste better then. They're still fine at room temperature, but that chill is much better.
Doug: I agree. I just love them that way. Most of mine actually go to-- I like to give them away because I like people to-- I enjoy them and keep some for myself, but I love to share them and say, "You ever heard of a pawpaw?" You give it to them and then they realize it was a native tree. Talk a little bit, describe the fruit and its flavor.
Miles: The fruit, the outer is like a-- I want to call it a light green, maybe slightly oblong. It's not a round fruit. When you cut open the fruit, the pulp is sort of like a yellowish, orangish type color and with some prominent seeds. The flavor is a little-- No, it can be a little like-- I'm not going to say cantaloupe, something like that, but it's sort of fruity. It's definitely a different texture. You can combine it with a little bit of a custard or that type of thing. It's sweet but not overly sweet.
Doug: It's its own flavor. We often hear it described as a cross between a banana and a mango, but that's not it.
Miles: No.
Doug: It's definitely its own fruit. Then the fragrance of the fruit itself is so strong. When you have them inside, like sitting in a basket or something for just a day, the entire kitchen is going to have the fragrance of that pawpaw. How long did it take you, after you planted your trees, to get your first harvest?
Miles: I would say five years, six years, somewhere in that range. Remember, I got a first couple. Like the first year I got like three pawpaws. That was then. I had more than last year, my one pawpaw tree. I got 16 or 17 off of it but the other one hadn't produced any. This year the other one produced fruit, which is interesting because the second tree dropped its fruit first, so I've got about 17 or 18 off of there. Now my other trees just started dropping. I've got about three or four off of there. Which makes you wonder, because I have about 10 other pawpaw trees in the sideyard. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all the fruit when I get it.
Doug: Well, we're going to talk about that, but first I want to talk about-- I remember when those first pawpaws came in for you, that first one, you had to share it with how many people in the family? [chuckles]
Miles: Well, share it with everybody at the house, four people, so it was like it didn't go very far, but it was unique. It was a fun experience planting something like that and get some fruit off it and say and think-- Going back and thinking the history of it and so on and so forth, it was like pretty cool that we're having that.
Doug: Now I know that you're making ice cream out of them. Tell me about this.
Miles: Oh. With my interest in pawpaws, my wife bought me three or four books on pawpaws and how to grow them. The one book actually had recipes for different things. Of course, you can make beer and all kinds of pies and all kinds of stuff. I thought the ice cream one would be interesting, so read through that last year. Then for Christmas, she got me an ice cream maker, so we finally had a good harvest this year so that, well, we'll go ahead and we'll try our hand at making ice cream.
Medically, she cleaned all the fruit for me and we got it all ready, and we mixed it up. There was a recipe in the one book, we followed that recipe and boy, it's good. I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it-- It does remind me a little bit of sherbet. Maybe it's like a little flavor like maybe a little banana but not quite there, but very good. Like I said, it exceeded my expectation.
She did find another recipe that talks about putting frozen bananas in, and we may try that next time because that just sounds so good. It was excellent. I was like, wow. I almost couldn't believe it was that good.
Doug: There are people, though, that are allergic to pawpaw. My wife is one of them, so I get all the pawpaws. I gave one to somebody else who had an allergic reaction, but there's a interesting historic story from the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806. They were out there, this whole group was out there, the food was getting scarce, and they found these pawpaws. Well, a couple of guys got pretty sick, inflamed and swollen eyes. They didn't know why but probably that reaction. Some people's, especially when you get the skins, some people can't handle them.
There's also another story that many of the Lewis and Clark, during that time, many of the people in the expedition survived on pawpaws for a short time because the biscuits were just about gone and the game was scarce. Always fun to hear those historic stories about the tree. My job has been to try and educate people on growing this tree because people just don't know anything about it. what is the reaction when you mention pawpaw to people?
Miles: I get a, "Huh. Really?" Most people don't know anything about them. One thing that was interesting is I planted 10 or 12 in my sideyard and they're still pretty small. Some are a foot and a half tall. I had a woman with her grandchild walk by and she goes, "Oh, what are those?" I says, "Oh, pawpaw trees." I said, "Pawpaw trees," and she goes, "Oh, do you know the pawpaw song?" She knew the pawpaw song, but she didn't know what pawpaws were.
Most time people, when I explain to them what the fruit is and the history of it, but yes, very few people know. I think once I started getting a decent pawpaw crop, because I live on a corner, a lot of people walk them by, I'll probably end up sharing some of it. My wife and I were like, "Boy, if we get a big crop, what are we going to do with all these?" Unfortunately, pawpaw does not store well. It isn't like apples. You got a cool celery, put the apples in there, they're good for a long time. Pawpaw's shelf life is very short.
Doug: Here's one of the reasons that people don't know a lot about pawpaw, is because you rarely see them anywhere. Just occasionally, in a farmer's market, because you can't pick them early. You have to pick them when they're ready and then they don't last. you've got to go eat them quick. They don't ship well, they bruise very easily. Now my trees, 20 years old, are probably 30 feet tall. The only way I have to harvest them is to just shake and shake and shake.
When one's ripe, it'll fall off. It can be disconcerting to hear that potato-sized thing thump on the ground next to you, but I usually-- I'll go up to the orchard, and I'll see maybe one on the ground, and I'll know that the critters are lurking, they're around. Then I'll start harvesting. They're not all ready at the same time. I'll go up and I'll shake and you'll get some down and then the next day a few more. Again, it's one of the last real seasonal crops left. There's no way to find it any other way. Just a wonderful seasonal treat I think.
Miles: Yes, one thing I may toy around with a little bit is that I may try to prune my pawpaws so they don't get any more than like 12, 14 feet tall. I may see if I can do it in a way so it'll be easier to harvest that way, but we'll see. I may experiment with a couple of trees and see how that goes and then go from there. I thought back because you talk about 30-foot tall and you drop them all the way down, and you're trying to harvest them or whatever. I thought, well, what happens?
Some of the books I've read on talk about pruning them to keep them more manageable size so it's easier to harvest. A couple of books were like running an orchard. I'm not going to get that carried away. The point is you can prune them so it's easier to harvest the fruit or it doesn't have to drop so far. I don't ever pick them off the tree. I wait till they drop off and I pick them up. If it's still attached, I leave it there.
Doug: In my trees, the one thing they do is they make more trees from underneath, like with suckers. I have got so many trees up there but they're really hard to move because they have a long tap root. I'm hoping to get up there in the spring before they leaf out and try and get the littlest ones out and pot them up so I can give them to people. Miles and I have talked about this already, starting them from seed has been a fun experiment for me.
Unlike most seeds that you dry out, the pawpaw seed wants to be planted right away while it's still moist. It needs that winter what we call stratification, that cold period, warm period, cold period. I put them in the vegetable garden not really thinking that they would really even sprout, and it wasn't until two seasons later that I looked in the vegetable garden and I'm like, "What in the heck is--?" I've got two pawpaw trees growing in the vegetable garden.
One's as tall as me and so they've got to go come out. Miles, tell me when is the best time to move this because even if I do-- When I moved them in the past it's four trees to get two to survive or six trees to get two to survive. Once they get established, they don't like moving.
Miles: I would say early spring. Late winter, early spring, before they even started really pushing out buds or anything. I would transplant them at that point in time and get them out of there. If you wait till they start pushing out leaves, I think you're too late. You do it late winter, very early spring, I don't think you're going to start to get-- You're not going to have any root growth. Maybe minimum amount of root growth going on. You want to be able to move as much as the root system you can. You don't want that plant to put out energy pushing out roots and then cutting a bunch of them off. Then you're already sabotaging the tree to a certain degree, so--
Doug: My stand is just filled with a hundred trees. Some of these suckers have fruit, started to fruit. I'm really not sure what I should do because it's become a huge area of-- It's been a pawpaw forest, but I've been told I need new genetics. They're still making good fruit. It's just I'm not sure how many of those suckers I should cut out of there. I don't touch them, I just let them do their thing naturally. The two original trees are setting fruit and then some of the ones around the edges are also setting fruit, so I'm not sure if I should thin. What do you think?
Miles: I guess maybe to give them room to develop a fuller crown type of thing and get better light penetration. It'll help with the growth. I would probably think about thinning out. Exactly how much, that's going to be an eyeball thing, but I'd be thinking-- I might look at if I was going to plant these, what spacing would I have? Then maybe, at that point, go from there.
I did mine, I did like in a grid pattern in my sideyard. The rows are 10 feet apart, and I staggered the rows. That's what I did.
Doug: That's good.
Miles: They actually recommend a little bit wider than that, but I was like, well, that's the room I have, that's what I'm going to go with. If need be, I can always prune to match the space I have. I would be looking at it from the standpoint of if I was going to do a planting, how much room would I want to give each one of these trees?
Doug: Well, I better get up there and do some thinning here. I guess I'll wait to do-- To move the trees. The thing that always happens every year, though, I say I'm going to move them, we get to early spring, and it's crunch time, and I'm running around planting vegetables and flowers and all sorts of stuff. It doesn't get done. That'll be the plan. We'll see how that goes. For this whole pawpaw experience for you, what has been the best thing?
Miles: Watching the trees mature enough to start producing fruit, enjoying the fruit. Now we're-- I think we're going to start getting a pretty consistent harvest. Made ice cream this year. Maybe we'll try some sort of pawpaw cheesecake next year. We'll start, and like you do, and they start getting more, start sharing with friends, family, neighbors and see what they think.
Folks I talk to are interested, they're not sure. Probably having worked with trees, just watching the maturity go and how they develop and the benefit of whether it's fall color or the fruit or whatever and just seeing it develop is always satisfying. Just like a garden. you do all that and then it grows, the satisfaction you get from that is so much better than a lot of the things you can experience in life.
Doug: Who would think that you and I would have something in common with our first president? [chuckling] The way we like our [crosstalk]
Miles: There we go. He was on to something.
Doug: Yes, he was on to something, that's for sure. Thanks so much for being part of this conversation. As the listeners can tell, we are both infatuated with pawpaw trees. [chuckling] You can grow them, basically, anywhere on the East Coast. It's got a wide range. Take a look and maybe you could be a pawpaw grower too. Thanks again, Miles.
Miles: Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it. Enjoyed the time talking about pawpaws. Believe me.
Doug: We'll see you. What fun. You should try planting a couple of pawpaws in your landscape. They are a wonderful, unique fruit. Now tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host Doug Oster, and do me a big favor. Please subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S-@-D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.
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