Planting Fruit Trees, In Garbage Soil: Pawpaw Edition

Planted pawpaw.

Everyone has some sort of limitations in gardening. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too wet, it’s too dry. All kinds of things can be problematic.

My issue is my soil. And yes, maybe, it could be worse. I don’t know how. Maybe if I lived in the Sahara desert… I could beat the soil and heat issues that I have here. I’m also gardening across a quarter acre, I have kids, a job and a house to take care of. It’s a lot, and I try not to cut corners, but I’m in my 50s. With this much active growing space: I can’t afford to be snobby about the products I use. I’m jealous of those who can.

What I have is clay. Like what you would use in a pottery studio. That dense, that basic, that fine grained, the inability to drain or conduct water and when wet: that slippery. Makes me think of the scene from “Ghost”. Except I am not having a love affair with my clay.

If it were just the clay issue, I might not hate it so much, however, I really have bad soil. It is like potter’s clay with limestone chunks throughout. You can only dig down maybe two feet max and you are in the solid limestone layer. Can you get down any further? Yes. But only with a tined garden fork and then you are talking inches. If you want to create a cone opening in the bottom for a taproot, like for the two pawpaws I’m planting, you are going to have to drive rebar as far down as you can and roll it around to open the hole enough to manhandle your rebar back out.

Nobody grows plants directly in our soil. We all have raised beds and pots. But, I’m planting two trees and for that you need to plant them in the ground. These two trees are not recommended for my area. I have had two pawpaws before but they were in pots. One lasted two years, the other lasted three. Why am I trying again? I’m putting them in my specialty holes that I dig, in the ground. Will they make it? Who knows… It’s an experiment.

Why am I running experiments with expensive plants? Well, I work for Raintree Nursery. They are an online fruiting plant nursery based in the pacific northwest. I am their plant ambassador for Texas. I enjoy responding to people’s questions and I really like the owners and the employees.

But: they pay me in plants. I already have the recommended types of fruit from Texas A&M’s horticulture site, in my yard. There’s a few other things I could try, but from Raintree: these are the most interesting choices. Plus, I’m about to have my boys leave the house and I don’t want a mess load of one kind of fruit to process for just my husband and I. So, I’m aiming at variety at this point. And I’ve been trying some things I’d never try, were the plants something I’d slowly saved up for. Pawpaws have chill hour needs, from: 400-1000 hours, depending on variety. I barely make it over the minimum, so I may watch these slowly fail. That’s OK. If that happens: I’ll pull the pawpaws and reuse the holes for something else. The plants aren’t really “free” since they are payment for my time and knowledge, however: I can’t help seeing them in a different light than my usual procurements. Plus, I love experiments! It’s the whole reason I garden.

Anyway. Not only am I digging a giant hole and using a tined fork to dig a couple inches lower and then pound a piece of rebar in (to open the rock at the bottom up): I am building this hole up into a shallow raised bed above the native soil. This is the only way I can keep the soil’s super high pH from the roots of these trees. Eventually, as they grow: they’re gonna have to deal with what God gave me here, or they’ll fail. Possibly without ever fruiting for me because of the chill hour issue. But. We’re not going there. Right now, I’m creating the best conditions I can, and that means removing native soil and replacing it with something more appropriate.

These will be on the north side of my house. Down here in south Texas: dappled shade does not slow fruit trees down: direct, sunny heat does.

I am also installing a drip line for both trees, so they live through our summers.

I believe that is why I lost the first two pawpaws. Pot culture for trees down here is really risky without drip line. Your pots dry out for two days in 100° heat, and you occasionally have this happen over an entire summer: your plants go into decline and die. This drip line will create an oasis and hopefully the amount of work I’m doing for the holes will create something special. Something that, hopefully, will let me grow something I’m not supposed to be able to grow.

So, what I’m planting is the American pawpaw. It’s the largest native fruit in North America. It has big, tropical looking leaves and the fruit is supposed to taste like a mix of mango, banana, and a little bit of passion fruit. The seeds and skin are toxic and the best way to eat the fruit is to squeeze them into your mouth and spit out the seeds.

The main reason (outside of chill hours) not to follow my lead here, is that: these trees like acidic soil. I hit the lottery with basic soil. Even our basic tap water can kill acid loving plants. This is turning into what I call a “defiance garden”. I’ve seen raised beds, with acid soil, for Gardenias. I have this same scenario, in my raised veggie beds in the backyard, with blueberries. The raised bed method is how I can grow bananas outside year round. This isn’t my first attempt to fight my soil. I’d say: it’s a pretty ongoing thing in my gardening experience.

Unfortunately, flower wise, these are like the famous corpse flower. Creating rotting stench, to attract not very gifted flies, to pollinate them. Some people hang rotting meat in pawpaw trees to help attract flies. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure my neighbors are not going to go for that.

So, hand pollinating it is.

(I did have my old trees flower for me, so I’m not particularly concerned about chill hours… Yet.)

Anyone who reads this blog knows I don’t like fiddly things. But: for this particular fruit I will make an exception. Basically: I really, really want to grow these. Jokes on me because: I don’t even know why. Maybe because I didn’t try hard enough with the other two. Or maybe I’m just a kook and I don’t like being told “no”.

BTW If you live in Australia, these are not your pawpaws. You guys are growing what I call Papaya. Which is not my favorite fruit, and also not the native pawpaw from North America. It depends on which continent you are growing on, for common names.

Anyway, back to the holes. I read an article with some new information. Something I’d never considered before: trenches coming from the sides of holes (in particularly bad soil) to increase moisture penetration and stop the pot culture the sides of my holes create.

This sort of looks like a cross, coming out from the sides of the circular holes.

Hey: in for a penny in for a pound, right?

I’m already geeking out using all of my knowledge about planting in this soil and the twelve years that I’ve done it. All that experience: culminating in a single hole. Now, I’m also adding new knowledge from the internet? Bring it on! For those of you gifted with decent soil, I envy you. The rules for trees is usually to only amend 1/3 of the planting hole’s soil. I even had someone try and shame me years ago by writing a rebuttal of my nearly 100% soil replacement and how wrong I was.

Well. That guy doesn’t live here, doesn’t grow here and doesn’t have twelve years of experience here. It just doesn’t work to have our garbage soil close to the young roots. Sure, eventually these trees will send out root systems into the native soil, but to help them in their early life, our native soil is just going to stress the tree and possibly kill it. It’s that bad. And yes, I’ve tried both ways of planting. I think people who quote negative stuff about creating “pot cultures” don’t give tree roots enough credit. Trees are the hardest seedlings to pull and they will grow through, and into, all kinds of stuff. Including under your foundation and into pipes.

So, yes it’s extra work. And as usual: I don’t care. I really, really want this to be successful. So. Adding a little extra muscle is OK. (I will remind you that my husband calls me “Thor, in the garden”.)

My gardening plans are yelling at me. “OK 50+ year old body. It’s time to get down and dirty!”

Here’s how it is looking:

The grass eventually died. I have a second hole to dig now. I’m short some concrete blocks. I have to go to the hardware store anyway, so I’ll pick up some more. So, now I have these two trees (that better be grateful that I went crazy trying to make sure they were happy!) We’ll see. Sometimes my experiments are massive failures. This may be one of those.

I was determined to have a food forest, even in this garbage soil. I still haven’t learned my lesson here, even after having to dig in this soil for the last twelve years.

I’m getting to an age that I’d like to stop being “Thor” in the garden. I’d like to just enjoy what I have already done! It’s coming time to be a picker, not a planter.

Meet you out in the garden to figure out how much extra work we can create for ourselves, in the name of gardening science!

Crazy Green Thumbs

PS I’m going to link to the “Weird Fruit Explorer” vlog on here. If you want the inside scoop, and you don’t know what a plant’s fruit is like: I always check and see if he’s tasted it. Nine times out of ten he has a video about that fruit! Invaluable information for fruit growers. I really recommend his channel. The video below is on pawpaws and other native fruits in the US.