I went to the NC State Extension Service Pawpaw Field Day yesterday. Since I have had pawpaws growing in my back yard almost as long as I have had Chuck in my life and have never had fruit, I felt the need to touch base with people who know something about them.

I got to taste fresh fruit, ice cream and bread. It does have its own flavor, which is very mild. I really couldn’t tell it was in the ice cream. The bread was delicious and, until I get some actual pawpaws, will be good made with bananas or persimmons.

They have a collection of 30 varieties of pawpaw trees at the Forsyth County Agriculutural Building and collect ripe fruit to freeze the pulp in anticipation of the day. The fruit is only good for about 3 days at room temp, 5 days in the fridge. They do not ripen in a way to allow growers to pick them green for shipping. But, pulp freezes just fine.

The woman who led my group through that collection said she can’t tell the varieties apart by taste. A woman in the group said she definitely could.

Along with getting to taste, I picked up a baggie of seeds. Everybody has told me something different about why I don’t have fruit. My arborist says it’s because of how they open and close their sex-changing flowers and has nothing to do with requiring cross-pollination. One collection of Master Gardeners said I need a different variety of plant that what I already have, like you do with blueberries. Someone else said that as long as you have separate trees near each other, they will pollinate each other just fine; it doesn’t need to be different varieties.

The guy that gave me the baggie of seeds said they just bag up what they have from collecting fruit for the festival. So, I mostly likely have more than one kind in the bag.

Since our winters have gotten so erratic, I don’t really trust the weather to germinate what is simply outside. Maybe yes, maybe no. So, I plan to put a couple of seeds in a pot by the shed and the rest in the fridge until Spring and then stick those straight in the ground. Maybe put one of them in another pot to see how that does. I think there are 5 in the bag.

I’ve been waiting this long. What’s another 5-8 years for fruit?