ATHENS, Ohio – Mark and Helena Grismore, of Athens, call themselves small producers, dabbling in roughly three acres of cucumbers, hot peppers, tomatoes and onions. But each September, many in Athens County flock to the Grismore farm and head to the couples’ pawpaw orchard. There they find 50 pawpaw trees over seven acres.

“The fruit just gets the locals’ attention and the variance in taste keeps them coming back,” Helena said. “This fruit can taste like a cross between a mango and a banana, while others swear there’s hints of pineapple.”

It’s early February, so there’s no pawpaw activity on the Grismore farm. By mid-September, however, the couple will sell their potato-sized fruit to farmers markets and online gourmet stores that advertise them as delicacies and price them at nearly $15 a pound.

The relatively obscure and little known fruit has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. The locavore food movement has embraced the fruit. Now there are restaurants whipping up pawpaw pie and pawpaw gelato, and local breweries are starting to make pawpaw beer. Still, a lot of people have no clue the pawpaw exists. Perhaps it’s because they are not that easy to cultivate, or that you won’t find them in local grocery stores. They need slightly acidic, well-drained soil, and harvesting them is labor-intensive. 

Ron Powell grows 100 different varieties of pawpaws on his farm in Adams County on the far southern tip of Ohio. He tends to 500 trees spread across 50 acres.

“My goal was to collect and try as many varieties as I could locate,” said Powell, who sells most of his crop to the owner of a microbrewery in Bloomington, Ind.

Powell and his wife began growing pawpaw trees in 1999. From the onset they gave away most of the fruit and processed and froze up to 100 pounds of pulp a year.

“It’s not going to sell itself overnight,” Powell said. “You’re going to have to market it. You’re going to have to get people to taste it.”

The down side is the fruit doesn’t have a long shelf life. The time it takes pawpaws to go from ready to rotting can be just a few days.

Another down side is raccoons, opossums, squirrels and birds can’t resist them. And, you can’t use a combine to harvest them or a tractor to fertilize them. They have to be harvested and pruned by hand. Since they flower in early April, the blossoms risk freeze and frost injury.

The up side to the fruit is that it grows from Michigan to the Florida panhandle. They’re tasty and high in potassium, vitamin C and other antioxidants.

“I don’t think we’ve really looked at the full range of taste, texture and uses that pawpaws have to offer,” Powell said. “I think we’ve just scratched the surface.”

Early Americans harvested them, and it’s been said George Washington liked to eat chilled pawpaw for dessert. Over the years this fruit has been given a variety of nicknames, such as the Appalachian banana, Hoosier Banana, Quaker Delight, Hillbilly Mango and Hipster Banana. Light green on the outside and yellow inside, a ripe pawpaw is about the size of a large potato. It tastes like a banana, mango and pineapple, and it can be soft and mushy like an avocado. Though they grow on trees native to Ohio, pawpaw fruit has kept a low profile.

“A few years ago I mentioned pawpaws and people looked at me like I was talking about a relative,” said Joe Boggs, an educator with The Ohio State University Extension.

Boggs is on a mission to change the perception of this fruit. A year ago, OSU Extension launched Marketing and Orchard Resource Efficiency (MORE) Ohio Pawpaw, a statewide, grant-funded initiative to help growers produce and market high-quality pawpaw fruit.

Ohio microbreweries have already discovered that the sweetness of pawpaw makes a find addition to beer. The fruit’s mild flavor does not mask the taste and aroma of the hops and barley. For beer and other uses, raising pawpaws could become another way for farmers across the state to boost their income, particularly in the economically depressed southern and eastern regions of the state. There, the fruit grows abundantly, having adapted to climate and soil conditions that limit the crops farmers can produce.

A pawpaw orchard can produce an annual turnover of $15,000 per acre for fresh fruit, $30,000 per acre for frozen pulp and $5,000 an acre for seed, according to the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association.

“If you ever want to grow a money tree, this is it,” said Brad Bergefurd, horticulture specialist with OSU Extension. “The market is there. As long as the farmer does a good job in establishing markets, the potential is there.”

Though the demand for fresh and processed pawpaw is strong, the supply is limited in Ohio because prospective growers don’t know enough about either growing or selling the produce in invest in trying, Bergefurd said.

Bergefurd, along with Matt Davies, an assistant professor with OSU’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Science, is leading MORE Ohio Pawpaw, which offers farmers and nurseries the know-how to establish productive pawpaw orchards and find markets for their fruit. A second grant-funded study will focus on generating a list of best management practices for pawpaw orchards and will help determine which qualities in pawpaw make it suitable to sell.

“We want to provide unbiased research-based information so farmers can make the best management decisions and maybe cash in on this crop,” Bergefurd said.

Bergefurd, Davies and others with OSU Extension are evaluating new and traditional pawpaw varieties, nursery propagation, irrigation, fertility, insect and disease control methods, food safety and marketing techniques. They’re also studying ways to improve the productivity of wild pawpaw patches found throughout Ohio’s forests.

2021 Ohio Pawpaw conference

 

2021 Ohio Pawpaw virtual conference

OSU South Centers and the North American Pawpaw Growers Association will host the 2021 Ohio Pawpaw Conference on April 17, 2021, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This free conference will provide invaluable growing and production industry intelligence needed to make informed business and production decisions regarding pawpaws. Pawpaw experts and industry leaders will provide the most current science-based knowledge on pawpaw industry trends.

This virtual conference is free but registration is required. To register go to go.osu.edu/ohiopawpaw2021. Conference details, agenda, speakers and registration can be found at this same site.

The Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating pawpaw enthusiasts and commercial growers in successful pawpaw culture, production and marketing. For more information about this organization, visit www.ohiopawpaw.com.

The 23rd annual Ohio Pawpaw Festival is Sept. 17-19 in Albany, Ohio. This festival boasts a pawpaw eating contest, pawpaw cook-off and every edible treat imaginable made from the pawpaw itself.