My personal experience with apple seeds is that they can be dried and still germinate. I’ve bought dried apple seeds from Steven Edholm before, and I have two lovely seedlings right now that came out of them. 
2 Likes
I’m nervous that adding wet seeds into the same box with the dry seeds could risk damaging the dry seeds. Meanwhile, making the wet seeds conform to the schedule of the dry seed box could prevent the wet seeds from having the special handling that they need. I think the wet seeds should either be mailed out to the interested individuals on a direct, individually mailed basis. Or set up a wet seed exchange list of people who want to participate in that, completely separate from the current dry seed box.
2 Likes
Last year I had pawpaw seeds to share. I made a separate posting about it, and had interested recipients private message me, and then I mailed the seeds out directly. In the case of pawpaw seeds they must not dry out, nor freeze. So I had to check the weather forecasts for the locations where I was mailing to, since it was early spring. So on one hand it might have been easier and cheaper to just put all the seeds in a box for a group chain seed exchange, for wet seeds. But on the other hand, the temperature sensitivity might have thrown a wrench it in. I don’t have any wet seeds now, nor in the foreseeable future. But just some thoughts. On the issue of temperature sensitivity, I think lettuce seed loses it’s viability if it’s exposed to temperatures over 80 degrees F. Or is it 75 degrees? Or is it just that it won’t germinate over 80 degrees?
3 Likes
Well, I keep my house at 79 degrees during the summer and it doesn’t seem to have any effect on viability. I’ve never tried to germinate lettuce in the summer, so I couldn’t say on that piece.
2 Likes
YAY!!! 
So glad it arrived safe & sound! I’m happy you enjoyed the new seed additions. I’m very excited to see how the African Legumes do for you, especially since they are very likely adpated to a similar climate to yours.
@UnicornEmily Na I’ve had enough fun for a while 
I agree with @Kimzy & @Rachel , those things are best shipped peer to peer because of time & wet seeds potentially rotting.
I tried to save seeds from many kinds of Grocery Store Citrus fruits that had seeds. Majority of times it really was a hit or miss. Most Citrus seeds I tried to dry & save just crumbled apon fully drying thus dead. Other seeds didn’t crumble too much are fully dry but I’ve never tested if they would grow. Seems like a trait you can breed/select for.
I think Most Citrus spp., All Igna spp. (Icecream Bean) & All Syzygium spp. (Clove Fruits/Java Plum) are all the ones I’m aware of that die apon fully drying out.
I’ve had the same experience, it’s why I store all my apple seeds dry (Some are 5 years old, in Metal Boxes where it’s cool, dark & dry). I’m not aware of any Pome Fruit Seeds (Maleae Tribe) that dies apon fully dehydrating seeds (Even Loquat doesn’t do that If I Recall Correctly).
I keep hearing the same thing from everyone I’ve talked to but My Fully dried Pawpaw seeds still germinated next year. Because of this, I’m currently storing all my Pawpaw seeds fully dry in plastic bags so they don’t rot.
Idk why my experience was so different from the consensus, maybe my seeds were special genetically, maybe Pawpaws don’t die apon fully drying out but loose vigor, Maybe fully germinating from fully dry pawpaw seeds is a trait that evolved recently (How else did it evolve to survive temperate Climates with such a Thick Seed Coat)? Perhaps the room I stored the fully dried seeds had more moisture than I realized thus seeds didn’t fully dry out (If so how did they not rot in Plastic Bag, I let mine dry for 3 months at room temperature)? I send fully dried seeds to a friend & they managed to germinate some of the pawpaw seeds (They were at least 2 years old, store dry in Metal Boxes).
Here are the fully dry pawpaw seeds I germinated in pots by planting seeds in ~Late November. I kepted them in Pots for 2-3 Years but sadly they died cuz they got root bound (Didn’t know where to transplant them).
hmm… Maybe, when do Lettuce seeds Mature on the plant? I think it’s sometime in Late Summer when Temperatures can be Hotter than 80°F no? I know very little about Lettuce but these are my initial thoughts.
2 Likes
If you ever have plants that are getting rootbound, and you don’t know what to do with them, consider root-pruning them and putting them back into their original pots. Most plants can handle having the bottom third (no more than that!) of the roots cut off, and then have about a third of the branches removed from the top (because the roots can now no longer support quite as many). This is a common practice with houseplants.
4 Likes
Wow! That’s great to see dry pawpaw seeds germinating! My info on keeping pawpaw seeds wet but not freezing, came from the person who sold me the fruits (for seeds), who had many years of experience both growing cultivar varieties in a commercial orchard and doing pawpaw breeding work (with offspring of those cultivars), so I just took the advice at face value and decided not to risk anything. Although I had successful germination, and successful transplanting, they didn’t survive to the next year, sadly. I had reserved a bunch of the seeds in my fridge, in case of failure, but in the end I felt like I’d rather give the seeds away than try again myself.
3 Likes
oh Smart! This is how Bonsai is done right (Pruning the Top & Bottom)?
Would’ve pawpaw fruited bonsai style? I know some Bonsai Experts got Apples to fruit Bonsai Style (It was like only 1 or 2, but still Awesome!)
That’s what I thought when I First saw them. I planted them even tho I’ve heard others say you can’t germinate fully dry seeds. I was pleasantly surprised it worked somehow. Hopefully there could be more studies done with this. I’m sure the advise comes from a good place with lots of personal experience too, I just wonder why mine germinated? Maybe it’s cuz I waited (A very long time, by forgetting about them )? Maybe it’s cuz I sowed them in Spring?
I really hope I can get some feedback from Pawpaw Experts who breed them, I’d love to hear what they have to say about my case.
Why? Did the winter kill them? Or did they rot? Are there any wild pawpaws in your area/region?
2 Likes
Some lost to deer browse, a couple to a unfortunate lawn mower incident, and then after I learned from those mistakes, the others winter killed. Regionally yes, there are wild pawpaws, but none in my neighborhood. I’ll PM you the contact info that I have.
3 Likes
Deer browse!? How? Don’t the deer know that those leaves taste horrible or are very toxic? Maybe this was the deer’s first time nibling Pawpaw or maybe they’re just stupid, idk.
If I Recall correctly, Pawpaw populations are increasing because deer are eating everything else which is why I was shocked you lost some to deer browse. Spicebush is pretty much invasive in my local area, it’s the most common shrub, like 80-90% of the forrest floor are spicebush shrubs 
(Clearly deer don’t eat spicebush).
I wonder if the Pawpaws you got weren’t climatically adapted to your region, like Pawpaws grown in Georgia would probably not do too well in New York.
If you can find the wild pawpaws in your region, save some seeds & try to grow those . I’d recomend finding them on Intaturalist
Observations · iNaturalist.
Investigate why your local wild Pawpaws are growing, look carefully at Location, Soil, Sunlight, Animal pressure, ect. Try to learn as much as you can, let the trees speak to you By their existence telling you their history & Health.
2 Likes
I don’t know if pawpaws fit in this category, but under adverse conditions some seeds go into a sort of stasis, resulting in extremely low germination, and higher germination later.
When I bought licorice seeds they weren’t germinating. Three years later every seed germinated without being chitted or stratified.
I was reading about this process later and the study mentioned several other plants that do the same thing. I did experience something similar with potato seeds, getting a higher germination with old seeds than with new.
2 Likes
Pawpaws have been in a general decline in my area for a long time, decades in fact. They used to be common mostly as an understory tree, especially in places with older bigger trees. They seem to like a bit of east or north slope as well. When I was a kid, you would come across big groves of them.
There are a lot of factors at play in the decline and deer pressure is one of them. Deer eat the young twigs of woody plants in the spring, and I haven’t seen much they won’t eat.
I’m given to understand fruit trees can produce fruit when they’re bonsaied. And the fruit is full-sized! However, since the tree is so tiny, if the fruit is large, it can usually only produce one fruit per year. Here’s a picture of a bonsai apple tree I found online:
Neat, right?
My suspicion is that making a tree a bonsai may even help it to fruit more quickly, because the stress of constrained roots will tell it that it needs to hurry to reproduce.
Even if that doesn’t happen, I imagine having the seedlings keep growing for awhile in pots, during the time you are waiting to own land you can plant them into, will give them a head start, so it will take fewer years after moving to your permanent location to start getting fruit.
1 Like
Wow. That’s really cool information to know.
Sounds like I should never assume seeds are too old to germinate – if I would be happy to have them grow, I may as well sow them and give them a chance. 
wow! Sort of Stasis, like a Mock-Dormancy? Extremely low germination & higher germination later may explain the discrepancy between my experience & those of most pawpaw experts.
I am a very VERY Patient Gardener, I mostly forgot about my fully dried seeds (Forgetting is the easiest way to be patient ).
My seeds only began to sprout in Late May, only 2 seeds came up from the soil line in Mid June, Only 1 had broke out of it’s seed & true leaves in Late July, and finally all 3 started to show leaves by Mid August. I accidentally broke off the seed on 1 of them, it eventually recovered & Re-sprouted from the roots.
wow! So it really is a patience game with a lot of these seeds. Makes ya really reconsider trowing away older seeds & giving them a chance.
Interesting, according Forager Sam Thayer Pawpaws are more common now than they were back then. I’m confused which is then? maybe it’s local area to local area?
Yikes! And I was under the assumption Pawpaw was doing well because deer ate everything else but pawpaw . Deer don’t really eat Spicebush, Garlic or Garlic Mustard tho, idk why, maybe really bad flavor?
I was thinking of this too. I even Had Pear & Apple seedlings Growing in Pots waiting for the day I get land (This was 5-6 years ago 
). They got root bound & Died. I didn’t know how to Bonsai, or even though it could solve my problem here. I only learned of Bonsai Recently.
2 Likes
I believe deer usually avoid alliums in general; I’ve been told they tend to leave onions alone. I’ve also heard deer won’t eat mint, so strong aromatics seems like a likely reason for them to refrain from browsing.
1 Like
Makes me wonder why isn’t Pawpaw a strong aromatic too? I crush the leaves and they smell like Diesel x Onion/Garlic. Also Pawpaw Leaves can be made into a natural insecticide they’re so toxic. Yet Deer somehow ignore all of that!? How!? Cuz they deer
My grandfather was born in 1884. He told me that when he was little there was barely a tree in sight of the Ohio River. They had all fallen victim to the boilers of the much-romanticized great steamboat era of river commerce. With the advent of rail commerce beginning in the 1860s or so and the decline of the steamboats the trees had started growing back. In my immediate area the abandonment of hillier and more difficult to farm areas after the stock market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed, helped the trees even more. People just didn’t go back to the hard life of small-scale sustenance farming, and they left the trees alone.
By my first memory in the early 1960s there were lots of trees, including pawpaws. There were also no deer here then, they had been extinct in the area for a long time. When they were reintroduced around 1965 into the US Army weapons proving ground, we thought that was great. By the 1970’s it was a treat to see one. They readapted rapidly to the changed landscape with a mix of farmland and woods. The state did and does guard them jealously and charges any apartment dwelling city boy with a gun and a four-wheeler top dollar to “hunt” them. They are not a treat to see anymore and no woody plant that I know of escapes their repeated spring trimmings, every spring, so few if any trees get a normal start to life.
Also, in the early 1960s CO2 in the atmosphere was still around 300ppm, at the top but still in the range of the previous 800,000 years but that began to rapidly change and along with it the stable weather environment that the trees had evolved in. My observation that pawpaws and all other native trees have been in decline for a long time stands. They aren’t gone completely, my own stand of wild pawpaw is in decline exaggerated even more by, of all things because the big ash trees that shaded them died and the broken tops fell and smashed them. It’s my opinion is that that author’s statement that the sudden near extinction of an iconic native species is a benefit to anything except nasty and invasive fast-growing things like Tree of Heaven is absurd.
Perhaps it’s a matter of education, I just haven’t read the right books or watched the right videos. That fellow has a nice website with a nice photo of himself with his hands in the air and commentary on his own expertise. He even, as they all do, offers in person classes. I suppose I could go there and see him in person with his hands in the air and I’d suddenly see the light. But that would require me giving him money, and that just isn’t going to happen.
I apologize; this is a bit of a rant and far off the topic of the seed swap. Just think of it as the rambling of a grumpy old curmudgeon and don’t pay it any attention.
5 Likes
It’s possible he’s foraged for pawpaws in a different ecosystem, so his observations have indicated different things to him. I hope so. I very much hope that there are places where wild pawpaws are still thriving.
Curmudgeon freely, if you wish to. Your observations are always interesting.
2 Likes
It’s crazy to think of a time where seeing deer was a rare sight & something to be happy about. I wonder with the upcoming recession, if deer populations will be over-hunted again as people search for cheap meat alternatives.
Speaking of Tree of Heaven, Can’t you Just chop & Drop your way to fertility with that tree? Why don’t deer eat it?
I know a lot of species simply don’t survive due to deer pressure. The only way I could find Wild Chayote (Sicyos angulatus) was because it was in a forrest that does Bow Hunting for deer. Wild Chayote had the most amazing Squash tasting greens, mild without any bitterness (The Other specimen of Wild Chayote was very bitter, clearly wild populations range in Bitter Cucurbitacin & with deer pressure, Deer would’ve only selected for Bitter forms thus less food for both me & them, kind of stupid. Would be cool to negotiate with them no? Is Shotgun or Car Crash the only thing they understand without a wolf around?) I knew it wouldn’t been devoured like my squash I planted in the Forrest suburbs.
No need, I got to read his books for Free via the Library. Pretty much all the Info is out there for free if your willing to search for it. I think that’s the point of ecourses, to do the dirty work of research so your students can be fed good info.
2 Likes