by Andrew Moore
I’ve come to the conference for many reasons, not the least of which is the advertised dinner, a five-course meal with each dish containing a bit of pawpaw, to be served at the research farm’s state-of-the-art facility. KSU’s Sheri Crabtree did most of the cooking (with a few desserts prepared by the University of Kentucky’s Robert Perry, and Gary Gotenbusch of Servatii Pastries). Before dinner, we gather in the building’s atrium for pawpaw smoothies and Kentucky freshwater prawn tails with pawpaw cocktail sauce. An acoustic trio plays folk tunes, including, of course, an enthusiastic rendition of Way Down Yonder. When we take our seats for dinner, the feast begins. We begin with curried pawpaw–butternut squash–sweet potato soup and hearts of romaine salad with pawpaw vinaigrette, then move on to various entrées and sides (I eat all of them): pork loin medallions with sweet pawpaw sauce, baked Kentucky tilapia with fresh pawpaw salsa, roasted new potatoes, and mixed fresh vegetables. And then, finally, dessert: a rich, caramel-like-pawpaw crème brûlée, with pawpaw ice cream and pawpaw cookies. The ice cream is thick, floral, brightly colored, and all-around wonderful. It’s a good ending to the weekend.
Pomper believes that pawpaw ice cream is the fruit’s best product, and where the crop might have a future. Chaney’s Dairy Barn, in Bowling Green, currently makes pawpaw ice cream for KSU on a regular basis. Kirk and Sheri use it to introduce the flavor to groups who are unfamiliar with the fruit. “I think it really comes down to the flavor,” Pomper says. “You show them what the potential is on a product like that, then hopefully you’ll get more people to do it. If you show people the potential of pawpaw, they’ll start believing in it.”
— CHAPTER ELEVEN —
THE OHIO PAWPAW GROWERS ASSOCIATION
Ron Powell doesn’t do the Boy Scout cut. Instead, he glides the grafting knife toward his hand, the blade’s edge dangerously close to carving his callused thumb. Occasionally he does get cut. But this is the method that works for him, and he has become extremely good at it. He is seated on a five-gallon bucket in the grass at Ohio’s Wilmington College, where at least fifty members of the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association are gathered around him under a large shade tree. All eyes are on Ron, but he is not nervous. “I use this Band-Aid and put it around my thumb, and it’s enough to catch the knife,” Ron says. “And after your thumb gets toughened up, you don’t cut it too bad anymore.”
The demonstration is part of the group’s annual member meeting. We’re listening, asking questions—Must you use a grafting knife? What about Kevlar tape? What’s your success rate, Ron?—as he gives a whip-and-tongue grafting tutorial. The knife slices down a thin branch of scion wood, a diagonal cut about two inches long, exposing a vibrant layer of green cambium. The cambium—a layer of meristematic plant tissue between the tree’s inner bark and wood—is where new growth occurs; it is the growth ring. The DNA stored within this layer of a pawpaw twig can produce a clone of the original tree, which in this particular case is a cultivar named Quaker Delight. The young tree will eventually produce fruit identical to that of the original, which was found growing here at Wilmington College. It grew in the school’s arboretum, and OPGA member Dick Glaser was the first to notice its favorable qualities: an early ripening date and lightly colored, creamy-textured pulp. Glaser was right to notice it: Quaker Delight won the Ohio Pawpaw Festival’s best pawpaw contest in 2003. And if it weren’t for grafting, no one would be able to taste this celebrated fruit; the original tree died several years ago. It’s one reason why Ron teaches the craft of grafting: so these named varieties—heirloom pawpaws like Quaker Delight—can go on living.
At Ron’s property in southern Ohio—Fox Paw Farm—is a collection of nearly every named pawpaw cultivar known to exist. Which, with over 140 single varieties totaling more than four hundred trees, means a considerable amount of grafting. Each winter, Ron takes cuttings from his trees and stores them in a refrigerator. In late spring, he grafts the budwood onto common pawpaw rootstock—seedlings he and his wife, Terry, raise themselves, grown from seeds they also process, clean, and sort themselves. Like Neal Peterson, through correspondence and research Ron has tracked down heirloom pawpaw cultivars. In several instances, fading cultivars have been rescued from obscurity because of Ron’s quest. “Part of my goal in my life is to collect all the remaining varieties I can,” Ron says. It also helps that he is a skilled horticulturalist. As he prepares rootstock for grafting, he stores budwood in his mouth—which is cleaner than the ground. His grafts have exceptionally high success rates, causing one member of the gathering to joke, “I think there’s something in his saliva.” If anyone were to lead the effort of building a pawpaw industry, after years of collecting and growing, Ron Powell is well equipped.
Chris Chmiel founded the OPGA in 2000, and Ron—also a founding member—took over as president in 2005. According to the group’s current mission statement, the OPGA is an “organization of pawpaw enthusiasts and commercial pawpaw growers, large and small, dedicated to educating and promoting the superior traits of the pawpaw, developing a pawpaw industry, marketing plan, and preserving and studying the wild pawpaw genetics.” And while Powell is committed to the state of Ohio, he is also working to push the industry at the national and global level. OPGA’s membership has for years included folks outside Ohio, and so in 2011 he formed the North American Pawpaw Growers Association, which now includes members in twenty-two states as well as Canada.
Integration Acres and Deep Run Orchard may be successful, but if interest continues to grow, Jim Davis and Chris Chmiel won’t be able to meet even a fraction of the demand. Two farms is not an industry. As that interest grows, the OPGA is a statewide support system for experienced and novice growers, sharing tips on grafting, germination, orchard practices, and even how to sell and market the fruit. Pawpaw orchards are novel and their culture is unknown, they reason, and growers will need help.
While the market for fresh fruit is still in its infancy, OPGA members have begun selling thousands of seeds, many of them winding up overseas. “There are actually more pawpaws being grown around the world, and more research being done around the world, than what we are [doing] in the US, which is really unfortunate,” Ron says. In 2012, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awarded a two-hundred-thousand-dollar grant to Bevo Agro Inc. and the University of British Columbia to develop a new pawpaw cultivar (Bevo Agro committed a matching amount to the initiative).1 And when Ron sells seeds, although some stay in the United States, lately the majority have gone to South Korea. In fact, as part of just one recent pawpaw experiment, one million pawpaw trees were planted in South Korea, and another two million are scheduled to be planted next year. According to Robert Brannan, these Korean planters are interested in the tree’s medicinal qualities, but in a few short years three million trees will produce an unprecedented number of pawpaws. A hypothetical juice company, which might need a ton of pulp for experimentation, could certainly put that amount of fruit to use. It’s unknown whether there will be a market for fresh pawpaws in Korea, but with that many trees I imagine someone will give it a try. Cliff England, a Kentucky nurseryman with acres of pawpaws, persimmons, nuts, and other trees, says there are well over a hundred nurseries in Korea alone growing and selling pawpaws, where there is growing interest in the fruit. I spoke with him recently, and he had just shipped more than two hundred pounds of pawpaw seeds to Seoul, at a value of ten thousand dollars. England—who is fluent in Korean—says the fruit is valued abroad, in Korea but also throughout Europe, because it is exotic. Meanwhile, Ron and the OPGA would like America’s great fruit to be successful at home, too. “The interest is there,” Ron says; “the demand is growing.”
For an industry to develop, growers want a reliable and consistent fruit: in other words, cultivars with the pawpaw’s best characteristics. “Sooner or later, if we’re ever going to get this thing going, we’re going to have to pick a variety or two or three, and say, ‘We need people to plant t
his variety,’” says Robert Brannan. It’s widely thought that too much diversity in a commodity, and too much variation in quality, will hinder the marketing of a fruit like pawpaw. Eventually, when that field has narrowed, these cultivars will need to be readily available to willing orchardists. Like most fruit trees, the cultivars aren’t grown from seed; grafting is currently the only way to propagate pawpaw cultivars. For decades American scientist have tried and failed to reliably propagate pawpaws through tissue culture—the laboratory production of microscopic plantlets. However, at the 2011 International Pawpaw Conference, Romanian scientist Florin Stanica announced that scientists in Europe had succeeded in propagating pawpaw tissue culture. I was in the room when he gave that presentation; it was the biggest breakthrough of the weekend. The room was quiet, and every grower who had struggled with failed grafts, mislabeled scion wood, and unruly, unwanted suckers clearly saw the value of this discovery. These pawpaws plantlets, specific cultivars, would grow on their own roots, meaning all suckers, all regrowth, would be identical to the original. Neal Peterson collaborated with the project lead, Giuseppe Zuccherelli, sending budwood and other plant material to Europe. Yet that method is still proprietary. Neal is now partnering with a firm in Texas, and hopes the trials will be successful. But in the meantime, grafting is it.
For today’s member meeting, Ron has brought everyone a young pawpaw tree, each around three years old, and at least two feet tall. I grab my treeling and comb through the cooler of scion wood, cuttings Ron has taken from his Ohio farm and is graciously sharing with us today. The budwood is taken in late winter through early spring, as Ron advises, when temperatures have been above freezing for twenty-four to forty-eight hours (which in Ohio means January to March). I know that the Overleese cultivar is an old-time favorite, so I select a pencil-sized twig from that bag. It’s my turn to graft. “Just remember, you’re doing surgery here,” Ron says. “It has to be clean.” I wash my hands with isopropyl alcohol, and then also the tools. Marc Stadler, another OPGA member and experienced horticulturalist, is my teacher. His preferred grafting knife is actually a simple penknife, so that’s what I use. Ron demonstrated the whip-and-tongue method, but Marc teaches me the cleft graft. “The cleft graft meets two important criteria,” he says. “First of all it’s effective. And secondly, it’s very easy.” I’m sold.
“I always say, I grow pawpaws because I can’t grow lemons and limes on my property,” Marc says. “Everything about this tree is so tropical, except that it’s adapted to our zone.” Unlike many other temperate trees, pawpaws are grafted late in the season, when it’s actively growing and leaves are on the trees—a trait that may hark back to its tropical origins. Pawpaws are more difficult to graft than a vigorous tree like apple, but compared with nut trees they’re quite easy. With my knife, I cut down the center of the rootstock. If the blade is too dull, I risk a ragged cut, inviting infection and a poor graft. “You can’t go to the dance in Kentucky without a good sharp knife,” says one OPGA member. “I don’t start using my knife until I can shave the hair off my arm,” Ron adds. “Some years, I may spend twenty or thirty minutes sharpening my knife. It’s that important.” I make my cut. I slide the scion wood into place, carefully lining up the layers of green cambium. I tie a rubber band around the graft, wrap it tightly with grafting tape, and I’m done.
At the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, the OPGA offers a free seedling pawpaw to each person who signs up to become a member (and pays their dues, of course). Ron’s logic is that the more people there are growing in diverse conditions, the more he can learn. “We need more data,” he says. There are lots of cultivars, and they don’t perform uniformly across the country. Rappahannock, for example, has always done poorly in the Midwest, but had a banner year recently in North Carolina. Derek Morris, a grower in Winston-Salem, reported medium to large fruits of great quality and low seed count on productive trees, and he reported Rappahannock kept well, undoubtedly a valuable trait to commercial producers. But again, positive Rappahannock reviews in Ohio are few. To sort this out, Ron wants data on everything: which pawpaws have good color break and turn yellow when they’re ripe, as Rappahannock typically does; which are easier to process and peel, ripen sooner in the colder North, and have a longer shelf life; where and under what conditions these observations are made. Ron has his own collection, and he can observe trees at Fox Paw Farm, but information on a tree’s performance in southern Ohio will hold less value to growers in such diverse climates as upstate New York and central Georgia.
In 1993, Kentucky State University’s Desmond Layne and Neal Peterson, under the auspices of the PawPaw Foundation (PPF), began a similar effort to collect data on pawpaw cultivars. The joint venture sought to test ten existing pawpaw cultivars and eighteen advanced selections from Neal’s experimental orchards. Between 1995 and 1999, the initiative expanded to twelve cooperators, primarily universities, in what would be called the Pawpaw Regional Variety Trials (PRVT). The objective was to evaluate those commercially available, named pawpaw varieties (such as Overleese, Sunflower, and PA-Golden, among others), as well as Neal’s advanced selections—the future Peterson Pawpaws—within and outside the fruit’s native range. Plantings were made in Princeton, Kentucky (at the University of Kentucky), Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, and South Carolina, with additional plantings at KSU, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, and Ohio.2
There was a lack of funding to support the project, and some of the plantings failed to thrive. The majority of them, however, grew well, but without any staff dedicated to the pawpaw projects, there was no serious evaluation of the fruit and only minimal data. Still, the project confirmed that pawpaws could be grown and reliably fruit in a wide variety of climates, from lower Michigan to southern Louisiana.
Ron wasn’t always a pawpaw guru. As he approached retirement, he and Terry were looking for a plan for their farmland in southern Ohio, so on the suggestion of a friend they went to visit the orchard at KSU. “This is what I want to do with the farm,” Terry recalls saying. “It was instantaneous.” She’d known pawpaws as a child, “because I had a great mom that took us kids into the woods and told us what things were. And one time she picked up a pawpaw and let us try it, and I loved it.” After she married Ron, he would occasionally bring home a sack of pawpaws if he chanced upon a tree, but often there wasn’t much time—they both worked full-time—for pawpaw hunting. Which made the KSU orchard seem so enticing—that you could actually grow your own pawpaws was a novel idea. “We just were blown away when we saw the trees planted orchard-style, because we’d never seen that before,” Terry says.
At the farm, Terry does most of the planting, as well as mulching, picking, processing, and eating (Ron and Terry both admit she’s never come across a pawpaw she didn’t like). “She was probably the biggest inspiration I had,” Ron says. “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be this far along.”
I ask Ron what drives him to do this work, to go to such lengths and efforts. “It’s something I can wrap my hands around,” he says. “I see it as a fledgling industry, and I see the potential in the fruit itself. It has a lot of historical significance. And I grew up in West Virginia, so you know, familiar with pawpaws,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Now, my mom never ate it. She said, ‘Oh, I didn’t like it.’ My grandmother liked it. But you know, Mom I remember would go out every spring and dig up “sassyfrass” and wash the roots and boil the roots down, and we drank sassafras tea. So even though she didn’t do the pawpaw thing, she was in the woods.” It’s a meandering answer to a difficult question, and he may not have said it outright, but I believe Ron takes such an interest in pawpaw, at least in part, because it belongs to the folk culture in which he was raised. It’s the neglected, native, West Virginia–Ohio–North American fruit. It’s part of the history that he belongs to. And yes, it has potential.
Robert Brannan, who is the current president of the PawPaw Foundation and a food scientist at Ohio Uni
versity, believes the “industry” should take a page from the pomegranate playbook. “We don’t eat the pomegranate, but it’s in everything,” he says. “Because it’s healthy, because somebody paid all this money to do the research. You put enough money into a fruit and you’re going to find out that it’s pretty healthy for you. So if any million-bazillionaires out there want to put money into the pawpaw, then we can put it in everything and no one will ever have to actually eat the fruit—but then we’ll have a big industry. And I’m not being cynical. That’s why the pomegranate exists.” In fact, Brannan thinks something similar to the pomegranate story could develop out of the millions of pawpaws growing in Korea.
But rather than waiting for a big industry to develop—for pawpaw plantations on the scale of midwestern corn and soybean fields—the OPGA is concentrating on small farms. They have a partnership with the Ohio State University for research and outreach to small farmers about growing pawpaws.
Brad Bergefurd is an extension educator with the OSU’s South Centers, in Piketon and Sciota Counties, and today’s guest speaker at the OPGA meeting. “We try to find any economic opportunities for our growers that can make them money,” Bergefurd says. “Those farms [in northern Ohio] can do pretty well with grain crops. But when you get down south, we have such small-acre farms that for generations tobacco was the highest-valued crop.” The tobacco industry has changed, though, and it’s no longer a viable earner for the small farmer. “My job is to identify economic income opportunities for these small farms,” he says, “and it has to be on high-value crops—that’s all we can do.”