Last fall I bought 20 Pennsylvania Golden / Davis cross paw paw seeds. I kept them in the moist paper towel in a ziploc bag that they were shipped in and placed them in the refrigerator to stratify. They only needed 70-100 days or so but I kept them in a little bit longer than that. After maybe 120 days I took them out and put them in some moistened seedling mix in the same ziploc bag (without the paper towel) and placed them on a shelf to germinate. After two or three weeks they had germinated, as shown above. The seed with the largest taproot is shown, although most of them had roots just barely poking out like the other seed shown. Some hadn't opened up yet, but I planted all 20 with high hopes.
I bought two 10' long corrugated drainage pipes and cut them into foot long lengths. The above picture shows one whole tube and another cut to length. I tied them together securely in groups of four with waxed twine recycled from pine straw bales. I then bundled all 20 tubes loosely with a piece of scrap rope. I filled each tube with organic tree and shrub planting mix and planted each seed about an inch deep. After I watered everything thoroughly and the dirt settled a little bit I had an inch or two of space at the top which I topped very loosely with pine straw.
The whole setup is under a cherry tree by the driveway, not far from access to water. I expect them to come up slowly, first concentrating on their root systems. They'll be in these tubes for at least a year, and may not be planted out until Fall 2018 or maybe even Spring 2019. I don't expect 20 trees to make it to maturity, but I think at least half of them had already germinated before going in the dirt. If I get at least two trees that I can plant near the other two that I have for cross pollination I'll be happy.
