Then you will have to wait till spring. Paw paw seeds germinate a bit different then you expect. From april - july or august the seeds put out a giant tap root. Then they put out a small amount of above ground growth before going dormant for the winter. Its much easier to get seed before it warms up, and plant them outside, or in a pot and toss them in the fridge. Even just a few weeks to strarify because no matter what youre going to wait a good 5 months before you even see any growth.

For Osage Orange, Cold Stream Farm sells them Cold Stream Farm and forestfarm sells them, they even have a named cultivar 'White Shield' which is fruitless(male) and thornless. White Shield Regular Osage Orange For Paw Paw, OIKOS often has a good selection of nice healthy plants. OIKOS Tree Crops Edible Landscaping also sometimes has a decent selection. Edible Landscaping forestfarm also has Paw Paw. Put Asimina in their search box to find Paw Paw There is also a place that only sells grafted named varieties of Paw Paw called Tollgate Gardens and Nursery. Tollgate Gardens and Nursery I've ordered from and had good experiences with all of them, except Cold Stream Farm and Tollgate Gardens and Nursery, which I've never ordered from.

There's a gentleman in rural Decatur, AL that sells grafted small trees of 5-6 different varieties. He's Dale Brooks and you can get his address and phone number from the Kentucky State University website under "nurseries". He's the first one on the list. He has one of the few, larger sized paw-paw orchards in Alabama. Well, I don't know of any other so maybe I'm wrong--but he has more than a hundred bearing trees behind his house. I have never gotten up there when they are coming in ripe but intend to! I think they ripen in late summer here, maybe late July or August. He works a job full time so getting him at home is hit or miss. Good luck. Mike Here is a link that might be useful: Best Paw Paw site there is

Interesting that someone should post this -- I was wondering the same thing, more or less. I picked 3/4ths of a bushel of them yesterday. Now, what to do with them all? I found some recipes from Kansas State University. They include a recipe for paw paw preserves, which are canned, but it looks really dubious to me -- I am SURE that paw paws (based only upon my "gut feeling" no research, etc.) are really low acid, and that this could be unsafe. The recipe includes a little bit of lemon, but I don't think it's enough to make it safe. On the Beverly Hillbilies, years ago, Granny used to talk about her pickled paw paws (along with her pickled hawk eggs, yuck!) -- perhaps we should invent something along these lines ourselves, I'll have to fiddle with this. I did invent a recipe tonight, paw paw blondies, with a brown sugar/crumb type topping. Those turned out very nice: 3 large paw paws, peeled, seeded, and pureed. 1.5 cups of flour 1 large egg 1/4 cup oil (neutral flavored, I used canola) 1 cup light brown sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/4 cup of water, if batter is too thick. Just mix it all up, pour into a 6 x 9 pan, spread it out evenly, bake at 350. When about 3/4s done, cover with this mix: 1/3 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons butter , all creamed together until smooth. I sort of just poured the topping mix over it, and once it melted, smoothed it out. Then, at the very end, I switched to the broiler mode and crisped and browned the topping just a bit under the broiler -- came out crispy and crunchy. It took about 30 minutes total to bake. A word of caution -- I'm not a measurer by nature, I just dump stuff in a bowl, and go by look, feel, taste, texture, etc, so the above measurements are just approximations. Nuts would be nice in these, especially pecans or macadamias. Dennis SE Michigan Here is a link that might be useful: Paw Paw Recipes Link