Thanks.

I suspect one of the reasons pawpaws aren't commercially viable on a large scale is because they don't travel well. The skin itself is rather thin for a fruit so pawpaws can be damaged rather easily and once they're ripe they don't keep. You have to either eat them soon after ripening or make something else of them, like pawpaw butter. We always let the pawpaws ripen until the skin turned purple, which meant the fruit inside was creamy, rather like a soft banana.

Here's some pics:

Ginseng, black cohosh, golden seal, native persimmons, native brambles, spicebush, black haw, sassafras, there are tons of amazing plant species that grow here. The Appalachian woodlands was one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. Too bad coal mining, charcoal making and terrible agricultural practices damaged so much of our land.

Good catch on the Pawpaw Festival. The pawpaw trees have large interesting leaves that have an almost velvet feel to the underside of the leaves. I have planted seeds, but have not gotten any seedlings.

Last edited Thu Sep 11, 2014, 04:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Especially the ginseng, persimmons and sassafras. My grandfather made the mistake of planting a persimmon tree too close to the house and every year when those persimmons ripened they got swarmed by raccoons! I tried transplanting some sassafras saplings but could never get any to take.

Re: the pawapaws. Did you happen to let your seeds "winter over"? We had so many pawpaws sprouting everywhere that they got to be a bit of a nuisance.

There are a number of good recipes at this site:
https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ksu-pawpaw/cooking.html
(excerpt)
Pawpaws are very nutritious fruits. They are high in vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper, and manganese. They are a good source of potassium and several essential amino acids, and they also contain significant amounts of riboflavin, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and zinc. Pawpaws contain these nutrients in amounts that are generally about the same as or greater than those found in bananas, apples, or oranges.

Composition

In comparison with banana, apple, and orange, pawpaws have a higher protein and fat content. Banana exceeds pawpaw in food energy and carbohydrate content. There is little difference among these fruits in dietary fiber content. Pawpaw is most similar to banana in overall composition. Apple is especially low in protein, orange is low in fat, and both are lower than pawpaw or banana in food energy. See Table 2 and Table 3 for details.

Vitamins

Pawpaw has three times as much vitamin C as apple, twice as much as banana, and one third as much as orange. Pawpaw has six times as much riboflavin as apple, and twice as much as orange. Niacin content of pawpaw is twice as high as banana, fourteen times as high as apple, and four times as high as orange. See Table 2 and Table 3 for details.

Minerals

Pawpaw and banana are both high in potassium, having about twice as much as orange and three times as much as apple. Pawpaw has one and a half times as much calcium as orange, and about ten times as much as banana or apple. Pawpaw has two to seven times as much phosphorus, four to twenty times as much magnesium, twenty to seventy times as much iron, five to twenty times as much zinc, five to twelve times as much copper, and sixteen to one hundred times as much manganese, as do banana, apple, or orange. See Table 2 and Table 3 for details. Sodium content has not yet been determined.

Amino acids

The protein in pawpaw contains all of the essential amino acids. Pawpaw exceeds apple in all of the essential amino acids, and it exceeds or equals banana and orange in most of them. See Table 2 and Table 3 for details.

Fats

The profile of fatty acids in pawpaw is preferable to that in banana. Pawpaw has 32% saturated, 40% monounsaturated, and 28% polyunsaturated fatty acids. Banana has 52% saturated, 15% monounsaturated, and 34% polyunsaturated fatty acids.

They have quite a bit of info; here's some recipes they've compiled:
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/Recipes.htm

I don't have any pawpaw trees but my coworkers bring them in every now and then. I've tried the fruit plain and in ice cream. It reminds me too much of banana for it to become a favorite of mine but it's good every now and then.

I think one reason they're not more popular is because they are fragile and don't seem to keep as well as something like an apple for example. I think that prevents them from being a common commercial product. I hardly ever even see them at the farmers market.

My grandmother made a pawpaw bread pudding that was to die for.

I could probably find you a recipe for that bread pudding or better yet, do you have your grandmother's recipe?

I moved away from SW Va 25 years ago, haven't seen a pawpaw since. I'll have to ask my mother if she has grandma's recipe. If I recall correctly, it was like regular bread pudding (loaf of store bread, crusts removed, torn into pieces, 2 cups of sugar, vanilla, 2 cups of milk, 4 eggs) but with pawpaw pulp mixed in with the sugar / milk / vanilla.

I remember that recipe because I made it for her- she had arthritis, and couldn't manage the squishing / mixing of the bread with the other ingredients. Basically, she'd get everything out, put it into bowls, and yell at me to come mix it, before she put it in a pan in the oven.

They are hoping to establish pawpaws as a commercially viable crop. Hopefully, in years to come more people will know what we are talking about and will be able to enjoy the pawpaw!
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/KSUstory.htm

If any of you would like to try your hand at growing pawpaws, you might want to check this out:
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/GrowingInformation1.htm

If they can just develop a skin that doesn't bruise so easily. In the marketplace, it would seem appearance is everything.