So in the process of trying to establish a diverse food forest that isn't entirely filled with the Rose Family of fruits in the canopy I've found myself drawn to these two fruits [I thought of integrating a taller mulberry into the canopy as well... but I suspect the birds would probably get the majority of them.]

My problem is living in a very cool summer area where days very rarely reach 90F and during summer the days stay under 80 at least as often as they exceed it if not more frequently. Fall comes fast sometime after the 10th of September with overcast skies and drizzly days in the 60's or 50's.

So I'm looking for cultivars which do well here. Typically that means the earliest ripening cultivars I can get my hands on. [I'm doing the same with apples and plums but that's because I want those fruits to ripen during our limited solar dehydrating season, rather than out of necessity to ripen the fruit.] Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Kentucky State University is the place to go for information about pawpaws.
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/cvsrc98.htm

PA-Golden 1, NC-1, Overlesse, and Sunflower would be good varieties to start with.

John Wolfram wrote:Kentucky State University is the place to go for information about pawpaws.
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/cvsrc98.htm

PA-Golden 1, NC-1, Overlesse, and Sunflower would be good varieties to start with.

Huh... interesting. One Green World says Sunflower is one of their later ripening cultivars...

Kyrt Ryder wrote:Huh... interesting. One Green World says Sunflower is one of their later ripening cultivars...

One thing to keep in mind is that there isn't that much difference between early and late varieties of pawpaws, maybe a month. As a comparison, apples have about a 3.5 month harvest window (5 months if you count the early apples). With the short pawpaw harvest window, seasonal variations are going to cause a large amount of variability.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:So I'm looking for cultivars which do well here. Typically that means the earliest ripening cultivars I can get my hands on. [I'm doing the same with apples and plums but that's because I want those fruits to ripen during our limited solar dehydrating season, rather than out of necessity to ripen the fruit.] Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Look up "Nick Botner" in (I think) Yoncalla, Oregon. We met Nick at his ranch a few years ago when we drove the 1/2 hour to his nursery to buy some apple trees from him. He has FAR more than just apple trees! He grows a lot of various fruit trees and other cultivars there in Oregon and has been doing this for many, many years in his private nursery. While we were there, he showed us a couple of older PawPaw trees in his yard and gave us a couple of young PawPaw trees and had several varieties of Persimmon trees that did well there in the PNW. He is very knowledgeable on what trees do well there and what doesn't.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/one-mans-apple-orchard-zmaz04fmzsel.aspx

I'll have to look him up, thanks for the tip.

Sure hope he's still in good health, he was already 77 when that article was written in 2004.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:I'll have to look him up, thanks for the tip.

Sure hope he's still in good health, he was already 77 when that article was written in 2004.

Same here. We were at his house 3 years ago and he was going strong at that time \

Hi Kurt - I realize this post is from last year but I just stumbled on it and wonder what you ended up doing for persimmons and pawpaws. Maybe you have discovered since then Burnt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska - we have been purchasing our fruit and nut trees from them for the past couple of years. We just planted a couple of Sunflower and Campbells pawpaws, as well as Nikita's Gift and Miss Kim persimmosn. Burnt Ridge specializes in fruit and nuts that will do well in our neck of the woods so I have high hopes. Our "farm to be" is near Independence Valley just outside of Rochester.