g'day friends, looking for all help and suggestions, our once healthy pawpaw (the red variety) papaya for those across the pacific, is now ailing. now just to reming all this tree grew very quickly to this stage and is full of fruit and still flowering, at first when i noticed it i thought it ahd gotten a bit dry, but it realy couldn't have dried out to that extent but we added liberal supply of fresh water but to no avail. the growing crown is all wilted and sagging as you will see in the photobucket pic's. what can we do to save this tree? it is about 3 mters away from the salt water pool but to date has shown no problems and it's not like sea water as the grass ahs never died when it gets a watering of the water. though it is well mulched when i inspected the area around the feeder roots was a tad dry, but watering has had no effect. there is no evidence of any insect attack. we where looking forward to a big feed of pawpaw. tia len
Could it be a root related problem Len? It's a bit hard to tell from the photos, but it does seem at face value that it doesn't have a lot of room for its wide spreading roots...it may have reached points where it can't spread roots further on one or more sides and that has been the cause of its setback? Either that or the fact it has spread under the fence to a possibly source of toxicity on your neighbour's side? Other than watering issues (which you've obviously already considered), and soil quality issues (shouldn't really be a problem), with no evidence of disease or pest attack, that's all I can suggest.
g'day jez, something has upset the roots and over it all happened over a very short space of time. the tree is app' 1.5 meters high and grew to that in around 6 months or a tad more, it is fruiting a dream. there is nothing to cramp its roots no cement barriers under the wooden fence or the pool fence, it has a garden on one side and open lawn on the other. but i have seen pawpaws at a friend house cramped in between cement barriers doing great guns. if the compost was going to be a problem it would have been long ago when the compost was almost higher than the tree was tall. we treated for nematodes using molasus, or it could be some sort of borer bug that has gotten in the feeder roots look quiet healthy and strong, it had gone nearly 3 weeks without any water at all before this happened. when it was young i ahd forgotten to water it and it showed signs and responded to a regular weekly watering. so currently we are lost and guess no pawpaws to eat this year, so far. if the tree dies not sure if we can/should (probably be better not to?) plant another in the same spot but plant it up higher again, or should we stick with the yellow variety? then how do we guarantee we get a good fruiting tree been caught before with those bi-sexual yellows they sell. and we know waht's involved in grwoing yellows from seeds just about got to grow 100 seedlings and wait to see if you get a few female trees that is how it was on the property where space was no issue, ended up with 7 female trees after 3 years of seed planting. and space being an issue we have possibly only one other position we could plant another. some extra history, this is all acid sulphate fill (whatever that means) to a depth of about 1.5 meters, under that is the sub soil of the original wet land that was cleaed to create this development. when i planted i used gypsum and dolomite. so maybe the tree has found some contaminated soil down there?? ta len
Hi Len, I recently read in Louis Glowinski's Australian fruit growing guide (I think it was there), that sometimes pawpaw trees get this collapsing going on. The crown of the tree seems to collapse and then the leaves go all yellow. From recollection if you cut the damaged part of the tree off and just wait to see if it reshoots. There was no real reason for this cause listed either. My friends tree did exactly the same thing and I was checking it for her. We just cut the top off and we now await to see if it survives. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Cheers The Fairy
g'day fairy, if cutting the top off saves the tree all good and well, wonder if we can leave the lower fruit on as well? len
Hi Len, I would think so ( not too sure how I would go without my head - mind you somedays I don't have it on). You can only try. If you are near the library or a bookshop just duck in and see if Louis' s book is there. It is an expensive book to buy but for me, a very worthy investment. Good luck The Fairy
Yeah, could be that it's had a setback from whatever root predator it was Len...if that and its dry spell happened at the same time then it may well be the cause of the wilt. FWIW mate, at our new place we have inherited about 15 or so pawpaws...a few that are more exposed to wind than the rest were evidently snapped by the cyclone last year (which was more a high wind than a cyclone by the time it got this far inland), and they've all re-shot from various main stem heights very strongly after losing their crown...a couple of the more advanced ones are bearing well. I can't see why yours wouldn't survive being topped and re-shoot well - providing whatever did the damage is not still a factor. As for leaving lower fruit on, my guess is that it wouldn't work...they are part of the crown...but I'm only guessing. If you have green fruit you can still use it as a cooked vegie like zucchini...better than no harvest eh?
g'day jez and others, ok yesterday i applied some dolomite mixed into water along with some marine liquid fertiliser, just in case there is a som deficiency that has just occured. tried the molassus for nematodes but so far that didn't work. now yesterday i noted that the tree is looking worse after looking the same for a couple of days,and it has a slight lean on it, so i gve it a tiny jiggle and it is now loose in the ground just at the surface so my thinking is some sort of beatle/borer has gotten into the base of the trunk, is there such a critter? so i expect at this rate in the next day or 2 the tree will fall over i can then inspect and let you know what may have been the problem. the fruit now is looking wilted, the runk still looks healthy apart from 1 little split near where the brown meets the green.. so no fruit this year. all we gotta do now is work out whether to risk planting another in that spot? may plant 2 one there and one somewhere else. tia len
g'day friends, ok it looked like the leaning tower of piza this morning so we pulled it out, took 2 pics one with and one without flash. our prognosus the feeder roots are many and strong, the whatever roots that grow downward are non-existant. reason app' 20"s down the ground has become very wet, as we had no rain for at least 3 weeks and we hadn't watered, and we don't think the pool is leaking, then the following could be the scenerio: we reckon we are sitting on a good shallow aquafa probably no more than 10 meters down maximum, and as we had dug a substantial hole and with the roots growing stronger there could have been a ground low pressure area caused and this ground water has risen? along with that we have a substatial garden bed right there as well s lots of moisture is being contained in the shallower soils than what it is out in the open. so now what to do, planting another pawpaw even if we raise it up will probably not work because sooner than later those whatever roots will find that very wet ground again. no high spots in this yard all basically flat. now how will banana's (the common everyday sort lady fingers maybe) go in that spot, seeing as how they tend to like a bit of water? now this sub aquafa problem may mean we can't grow pawpaw's anywhere in the yard? now the pic's: tia
more: was ; help sick pawpaw ok fellow gardeners, here is what i reckon happened. this pawpaw was about 2 meters away from the sal-clor swimming pool, and me now thinks, that water splashed out of the pool contaminated the ground around the roots or where the roots grew out to, thus the tree karked it. why i think this is we planted another pawpaw at the opposite end of that agrden which puts the tree about 8 or so meters away from the pool environ ok? we have had oodles and oodles of rain this year so far, so plenty of ground water around and as i founf today it is only the top around 8"s of medium in the beds is all that is not saturated or water logged (what i expected that is why the raised planting positions), so the new tree had shot off with all this extra water around it currently growing at a great rate of knots and with young fruit. it is growing much faster than its twin we planted out front for an each way bet it is smaller because it is drier. got a pumpkin growing in that other pawpaw spot and it can't too well drained right now but it is going great guns also. anyhow reckon that would be close to the call. next i will tell you how delicious the fruit is hey lol, now there i go counting me chooks before they are eggs. hope all in aus' who need rain are getting what they want. len
Len, A couple of things to toss into the thread mix. Mulch up against the trunk, any number of virii and grandkids whacking the trunk. My kids killed a couple of pawpaw this way, whacked the trunk with sticks and it must have acted like a compression ringbark. [They were into sticks at that time]. Thankfully, I have always had room for multiple pawpaws so I have never had to be too particular if one happened to die. I had one pawpaw plant that grew beautiful seedless fruit, I didnt think till well after it's demise that I should have organised someone to tissue culture it. cheers
nope no mulch up against the trunks ever. and the grandies usualy in the pool so don't play near gardens, but yep that would cause stress at the very least to the tree. this latest tree looks fantastic. len
