I am new to planting and growing pawpaws. I will be planting my first ones this Spring. I ordered 4 KSU Atwoods (SKU 2710) and 4 KSU Benson (SKU 2711) trees today for April delivery in Petoskey, Michigan. Like Matt, I would like to know more about these KSU varieties. Size?, Taste, rate of growth, productivity. I ordered them from One Green World in Portland - these were the only Peterson varieties they had available. I may call One Green World tomorrow to ask them these questions but I thought someone on this site might be willing to share their experience or to share what they have heard. I am opening up a standing 2 acre cedar tree lot and have room for more pawpaws ao, when available, I may add several other Peterson varieties this Fall. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. - Bob Wiley

Awesome! Puglvr1, I didn't know that Mangoes can be used as part of the landscaping. It's been so creatively done by you and the effect is really pretty. The leaves on your Mango(s) look really shiny and lush green. Did you plant three Mangos all in the same hole? I've been reading on planting 2-3 plants in a hole and didn't know what to make out of it. If it is really planting three trees in a hole, won't they be in a tight spot for competiting for nutrients and space? Thanks for sharing your Cogshell and Pickering Mangoes. I often see Cogshell at Lowe's or Home Depot, but I have to keep my eyes peeled for a Pickering Mango next time. I think a dwarf or semi dwarf is ideal for my yard and as well for easy maintenance and harvesting if I get some fruit from it. This is Cogshell fruiting in the pot in June of 2010. So far, I'm only able to eat off the fruit of Cogshell and Carrie. Nam Doc Mai is still potted and very small. I don't know if I should plant in it the ground though. It's definitely much better if they're planted. Carrie grew quite a bit after being in the ground.

I must have suffered a run of very bad fortune or my seed must not have been true. I tried Stupice 2 years in a row in the late 90's. Very stunted little plants, very susceptible to foliage desease, a few tomatoes hardly worth the effort and certainly not tasty, then the two plants died each year. So in 2003 I traded for and then planted some Bloody Butcher and Matina seeds. Grew two plants each in both 2003 and 2004. Both varieties grew better than the Stupice and actually had a goodly number of tomatoes. But in both years they would not fully ripen and almost invariably had green tops and also green inside at the top. If I tried to fully ripen them they would over ripen on the bottom and go quickly to rot. Matina seemed to be a bit more of a grower than Bloody Butcher, but I noted both were very susceptible to early blight. I wonder in retrospect if I might have gotten crossed or otherwise substandard seed in my trades. It's too late for 2009 to try them again but maybe next year I will have another go at them. Far too many good reports to discount them at this point. Looking for the Holy Grail in an early tomato has been an ongoing hunt for many many years. I have tried many varieties. By far the two that have performed the best for me are Early Cascade and Early Girl, the latter giving the largest and most desirable fruit. But the hunt goes on and this year I am trialing Early Goliath, Super Marmande, and Jetsonic. Also I planted 4 Ultimate Openers which my past experience indicates to be a fair 75 day tomato rather than the 57 day tomato as advertised. These will all go as give aways set out on the front porch of the VFW in mid May.

Felipe: Thanks for the kind words. You asked about: garcinia intermedia ......beautiful and easy to grow tree/bush. Very attractive and prolific in fruiting. The taste is too heavily skewed to the sour side for me...not enough sweetness and much too little flesh as the result of very large seeds. -lychee bengal.....fairly large fruit, but has the largest seeds of all the lychees I grow. The flesh that is there is very nicely flavored. It bears in the mid to late lychee season which makes it worth growing for me. -lychee bosworth 3.....a/k/a kwai mai pink.....I haven't had much success growing the tree....not sure why. I have one tree that is very small that gives me about 15 or so undersized fruits a year. The original air layer was from the tree at Bill Whitman's home. Unfortunately, my tree got run over by a truck when it was young and seems not to ever have recovered completely. But then again, I have 2 Kwai Mai Pinks from Fairchild and another source and those trees are even more stunted than the one that fruits. And, these oterh two never got hit by the truck. I love the flavor of it. And the best thing I can say about it is that Bill Whitman...who could have had anything in his collection, grew three cultivars of lychee (at least when I was last to his house about 15 years ago)......Bosworth 3, Kaimana and Emperor. -illama.....very interesting fruit and tree with its diverse foliage. The ripe fruit is very good, but not very meaty. The fruits tend to split and get eaten by the bugs before we get to have them. They have a creamy raspberry flavor that is reminiscent of raspberry cheescake. Mine is growing on an incompatible rootstock (pond apple, a. glabra) and they may be having some negative effect on the tree overall. Regarding garcinia madruno a/k/a charichuela....I tried it at Bill Whitman's. The fruit is more in balance between sweet and sour than intermedia, however it suffers the same lack of flesh and very large seeds and that makes it a marginal fruit for me. I think it may grow better at altitudes greater than my 6 feet above sea level as all of my attempts to grow it from seed were not successful. I think I even bought a fairly large seedling years ago from somewhere and promptly killed it. Again, interesting tree and fruit, but something I have given up on for the above reasons. Harry