Tag Archives: pawpaws

farming

September 1, 2024 – Pawpaw Foraging

1 Comment
Pawpaws found today.

After a busy week, we wrapped up a few local chores and errands at home in Staunton, and started the holiday weekend Friday morning with a specific mission. Inspired by our visit to a local nursery last weekend, we hoped to find ripe pawpaw fruit in the wild. In particular, we wanted to collect some wild fruit to eat, and also collect the seeds to grow new trees with and bring novel dna to our pawpaw patch. We are saving all of the seeds from our fruit and we are going to plant them at the farm. A dedicated search on the iNaturalist app showed us locations along our route from home to the farm in Buckingham County where pawpaw trees, flowers and fruit were observed and identified. Some of the observation sites along or near our route were private land, so we ruled them out. But we began to notice the pawpaw trees by the side of the road as we drove to and from the Farm. Especially where rivers, creeks and streams crossed the road. We saw Black walnut trees and many pawpaw trees. Having tried a couple ripe pawpaws last weekend, we figured it would be worth stopping to take a look if we saw accessible, fruiting pawpaw trees. They fall off the tree when ripe. So far, we have found about 20 in various stages of ripeness. A few were so far gone, we had to just plant them in a pot. We have at least a hundred seeds now and we have them stored in the refrigerator. We’ve also gotten to eat a few of these creamy, tropical-tasting native fruit.

Pawpaws we found yesterday.
The seeds we are saving. We will cold stratify these in the refrigerator for 70 to 100 days and then plant these in deep pots to accommodate their need for a long tap root.
A turtle we saw working on his mushroom dinner.
Amanita flavoconia, Yellow patches. Found along Mary Banning Way.
The pawpaw patch.
Our Concord grapes we just harvested.
farming

May 7, 2024 Pawpaws are fruiting at Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm

3 Comments

After going out on April 27 (a little over 2 weeks ago) and hand pollinating the pawpaws, we were delighted yesterday to see them beginning to grow the tiniest fruit. About 10 trees have fruit forming so far. These were the trees we found flowering and used Q-tips to pollinate. There are at least 100 pawpaw trees down there. We have plans to bring more sunlight into the pawpaw patch and move some of the pawpaws to spread them out. We are beyond excited for these fruits and can’t wait until fall to harvest them. We hope to grow our population of pawpaws and increase their productivity.

Young pawpaw fruit.

The blueberries continue to develop and we find more and more plants flowering and growing small green blueberries. We hope to taste a few before the animals get to them.

We expected to find many mushrooms at the farm since it’s been raining a lot this past week, but we only found these Gloeophyllum along the sunny southern border.

We found this colorful pair of six spotted tiger beetles down by the waterway at the south side. They feed on a wide variety of arthropods and over winter in larval burrows.

Cicindela sexguttata, a common North American beetle.

We continue to pull up and clear out invasive trees as we find them. So far, tree of Heaven, mimosa and paulownia are the invasive species and we find them mainly along the road. We also continue to take down black Cherry trees that are diseased and dying.

We’re taking back our southern border and clearing out overgrown brush. It is so satisfying to cut the tangled overgrown weeds back. We are thrilled with our old Husqvarna.

Brush we are cutting back along southern border.
Pollinating the pawpaws.
farming

April 23, 2024 Pawpaws and blueberries flowering at St Andrew’s Forest Farm

2 Comments

Yesterday in the forest,we found pawpaws blooming and blueberries flowering and fruiting, and in the clearing we found our first cover crop of crimson clover flowering. Butterflies and other insects were enjoying the flowers.

We found about 20 pawpaw trees with flowers and plan to get back out there to pollinate them by hand within the next few days.
We saw hundreds of blueberry bushes flowering with some fruit beginning to form.
Mountain laurel budding up.
Crimson clover flowering. The butterflies were all over them.
South property line with mayapples in the wet weather gully.

We are constantly amazed by the abundance of food growing naturally in the forest. We look for ways to encourage and support the continued growth and development of a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.