Someone contacted me and asked for an update on my pawpaw transplants and suggested others might be interested also, so here it is: I dug up and relocated a total of 7 wild pawpaw trees (I did 3 more about a week after my last post above). All 7 lived about 6 weeks. Unfortunately, the 2 largest ones started to die after about 6-7 weeks, in spite of the fact that they actually put on new growth about a month after the transplant. I must admit that it was very dry here this summer and I didn't do a great job of keeping them watered, so it could be my fault or it could have been the cut tap root or other factors, but living 6-7 weeks makes me think more about the lack of water than tap root, but who knows. Now for the good news: The other 5 that I moved were (2) about 3 feet tall, and (3) about 2 feet tall and they are all 5 still alive and well. Two are in the ground and 3 are in 4 gallon pots ever since being moved. They are alive and seem fairly healthy, BUT they put on almost no new growth at all this whole summer. That doesn't mean they are unhealthy....they have the same amount of foliage as they did early on, and they actually still look pretty healthy...they just didn't grow any at all, which is unusual to me but may be common for slow growing pawpaws. The 2 three-foot wild transplants in the ground were in full sun, and the 3 wild transplants in the pots are mostly in the shade. As for my Petersons, I got 2 10 inch plants from edible landscaping-Susquehanna and Shenandoah. I made a shade for them and babied them more than my transplants since they were closer to my house (and water). In spite of this, one of them died and the other has only one sad leaf left on it and looks like it is dying for certain. I have read many places that pawpaws cannot be moved, but that just doesn't seem to be true based on my limited experience. Even if they should die this winter I will have a hard time blaming it on the move...surely 5-6 months of life after transplant is enough to overcome transplant shock and the fact that some are still alive and well (though not growing much) bodes well for the possibility of relocating wild pawpaws in my book, though I'm certainly a rookie! One last note: If you have watched my post you know I looked a long, long time before I found a pawpaw patch, and I was thrilled when I did. The most exciting news is that just this past weekend I returned to the patch for the first time all summer to see if any fruit set there. IT DID!!!! I counted a total of about 14 pawpaw fruits in the whole patch. They were about the size of a roll of quarters now and hard as a rock, but I was thrilled to see them. My fingers are crossed that at least one or two of them will survive to get ripe so I can finally taste pawpaw for the first time in my life! If so, I will be willing to share some seeds. Priority will be given to those people here who have been helpful to me and answered my fruit tree questions this year (you know who you are) and if they don't want them then I'll share with anyone else who asks. It will be way of giving something back to this forum which has been so good to me. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself....lets see if I actually get any wild fruit and if so, how good it is. Then we can see who wants seeds (if anyone). Thanks all.

Hi everyone! I've followed this thread with growing interest, and finally took the next step by posting hete :) . I am a professional gardener, and my interests lie heavily on pomology and dendrology (yup, a tree hugger!). I have a vision to introduce cultivars of mulberries, american persimmons, paw paws, nuts, and cornelian cherries to my country of Finland. Now to many it would seem that being as far north as alaska might impose some challenges, but thanks to gulf stream, our southern end is beginning to be the equivalent of USDA 5b/6 ..but of course that's regarding only the low temperatures. At Köppen-Geiger climate we at the south are at Dfb , for those who use that. I'd like to talk about all potential plants, but let's focuse on paw paws...now we have of course insane amounts of light at the peak of the summer, will that help or hinder paw paws, I'm not sure. Last two summers have been wet and cold, and I suspect that no paw paws would have ripened. But then again, I remember summers with +30 Celsius (86 F) , and some winters that went as low as -30C (-22F) . Most of the time however we stay near the -20 C (-4F) at winter, so the low temperatures really are not an issue. However the growing degree days might be...and so I am especially interested in trying the absolutely most earliest cultivars! I really don't care about the size right now, I just want to PROVE to me and to others here that you can actually grow paw paw in the open and outside :D The excel sheet that someone posted is most excellent tool and I thank for that. Now to questions: -Do you have any special recommedations to try? -Should I also focus on growing seedlings ( I have four one year old seeldings, and 50 seeds in the fridge, all from Oikos) to find special case that grows well here? -Do you think that root stock will make a real difference? -When do you think is the best time to graft paw paw, and how thick the trunk should be before I try that? I thank everyone for any help bringing paw paws (and others) to my country :) -Janne

Thank you Brady. The cuts look clean, not ragged, which is why I first thought my husband has been cutting them off, but he swears he hasn't. We have a large lot (1/2 acre), but live in the city, so it's not deer. The little trees are in our fenced backyard along a fairly shaded southern fenceline area. Our neighborhood has WAY too many squirrels and rabbits, but I haven't noticed any critters I'd suspect of doing this. The trunks on the damaged trees are between 1/2 and one inch in diameter. If I'm ever able to grow the trees to maturity, it will probably only take the squirrels a couple of years to discover the fruit. They pick everything from the 3 plum trees, 3 pear trees, 2 peach trees, 2 apple trees and mature pecan tree currently in our yard. I would suspect the neighbor, but they don't spend much time in their yard or appear interested in gardening.

I forgot to mention, vet did say the hair discoloration was probably due to the licking, since it wasn't inflamed or anything-- good call, girlwithaspirin! I will admit, I have jumped on people's cases (sometimes probably more harshly than I should have, unfortunately) when they post here looking for advice when they really need to be getting their pet to the vet ASAP... but there's a big difference between emergencies and non-emergencies, and message boards like this can be an INVALUABLE resource for getting some good ideas and possibilities to run by a vet if the need arises. I don't assume that my vet, or my doctor, or anyone with an advanced degree or title is so brilliant as to know EVERYTHING there is to know about their field; if I can help out by doing a little homework of my own, it certainly can't hurt, you know? Perhaps it would be good for someone to post (or re-post) a list of things which a pet owner should call their vet about IMMEDIATELY, before seeking advice from a message board... there are a lot of pet owners out there with the best of intentions, but just not a lot of practical common sense; perhaps such a list would be a good thing to print out and keep next to the computer or something. :)