PLANTING PAW PAWS WITH PAPA-PEPPER

PLANTIN' PAW PAWS VIDEO

HERE'S THE BASICS

Here is the area that we wanted to plant the paw paws. This are works well for a number of reasons. It is located between the driving path to the garden and the cattle panel fencing where we keep our Jacob's Sheep. Since this area really doesn't have a specific use at the moment, we thought that we could put it to use.

It already had a few small trees and shrubs growing in it, so Monster Truck and I grabbed a hatchet to remove them. It's not that we don't like trees or shrubs, we just prefer more beneficial ones than these.

The plants that we removed had a use too, since we could toss them over the fence to feed our Jacob's Sheep. Here Crazy Horns and her young daughter are enjoying eating some of the shrubs that we uprooted. Whatever they leave behind will been chipper shredded and used as mulch, so nothing will be wasted.

The rest of the flock showed up too when they realized that there was free food. Monster Truck had this area pretty well cleared by this point. Way to go son!

You'll notice that there are a few larger trees in the are too. This works out well because Paw Paw trees prefer to be in the under-story of the forest for the few three or four years of their life. If they want more sunlight after that, we can use the larger trees as firewood or lumber and allow the Paw Paws to grow up even further.

Since we are using dormant bareroot Paw Paw seedlings, I like to "wake them up" by putting them in a bucket of water for a few days. Only the ones that actually show signs of growth get planted, so I won't be wasting any effort. Also, this makes sure that the seedlings are hydrated too before we plant them.

I dig the holes deeper than I am planting and put some rabbit manure in the bottom as a fertilizer. Since we are currently feeding our rabbits a lot of lawn trimmings, there are a lot of potential seeds mixed in. That's why we are currently composting the manure at the moment, but in this case, I am planting it deep enough that any seeds should not be an issue.

The other natural fertilizer that I put in the holes prior to planting is fish. We like to save some smaller ones from our fishing trips to use as fertilizer, especially when the @little-peppers get a hook in them too deep. This allows the fish to still be used, even if it too small to eat.

Much like the plants that we removed, we are also adding in some bushes or shrubs. One kind that we are planting under the Paw Paws is the American Gooseberry. This way we will have another food source right beneath the Paw Paws and get to use more of the soil.

The other smaller plant we added in is the American Beautyberry. All three of these plants grow wild in the area anyway, so we will have three useful, native plants growing in this area. These died back to the surface last year, but they are still alive and ready for a permanent home. We'll use these for food too, plus as a natural mosquito repellent.

This is what the American Beautyberry will look like later on. It'll take a while to finish planting, and even longer to grow, but we are getting it started and trying to use every bit of our land that we can.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-planting-other-things-too

Until next time…

GIF provided by @anzirpasai

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