tasting the fruit harvest

[eub]

We tried the Actinidia kiwifruit and the pawpaw, two of each being the year's harvest. The kiwifruit (thin-skinned, and had wizened a bit) was a tiny perfect kiwifruit when sliced in cross-section, bright green flesh and black seeds. It tasted less of that kiwifruit smack that I don't much like; had a musky finish. Not bad. The pawpaw, I don't know what's ripe with them, this one fell green and hard, now is still green-skinned but softer, flesh yellow-orange, tastes a bit like papaya? Bitter aftertaste. Did not finish.

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http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/forum/woodies/4838-paw-paw-pollination.html

Something not mentioned... bees are not a natural pollinator of this species. The pawpaw predates bees on the evolutionary timescale... that's why their flowers are the color of meat and smell like rotting flesh so next trick to these is getting them pollinated. Every site you're going to run into is going to tell you to use a paint brush and hand pollinate them. Oh bother. You don't need to do that. Take your left over chicken fat and skin trimmings and toss them in the trees when you start seeing blooms. You can toss any raw meat up in the trees too. Start slinging it up there any which way you want. This brings in the carrion beetles and flies that will do your pollination work for you. Sometimes it brings in opossums too which isn't a bad thing... I like opossums.

http://www.kitchengardeners.org/2006/01/taking_the_pawpaw_challenge.html

Fortunately a man in Kansas used a different approach. He collected pawpaw pollen from several trees, mixed honey with it, and put a little dab of the mixture on pawpaw blossoms. Bees in the area discovered them and pollinated the trees like crazy, which gave him a fantastic crop.