How to Keep Per-Tree Harvest Records: A Copyable Sheet for Pawpaw, Persimmon, Nut and Backyard Orchards

Most small orchards know their total harvest in a loose way: a few buckets of pawpaws, a good year for persimmons, a bad year for the hickories. What they do not know is which tree supplied which fruit. That matters because trees of the same species, planted a few yards apart, rarely behave alike. If you cannot say which of your eight pawpaws cropped heavily, which one dropped fruit early, or which persimmon has produced nothing in four years, you are making decisions about pruning, replacing and grafting on a feeling. A per-tree harvest record fixes that, and it needs nothing more than a notebook. This piece gives you a sheet to copy today, explains why each field is there, and then shows how to keep it alive for years.

What a published pawpaw record actually contained

There is a useful real-world reference for how little a good record needs. The Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association's website hosts a presentation that Robert Brannan of Ohio University gave at the 2017 North American Pawpaw Growers Association annual meeting, titled "Comparative Analysis of Pawpaw Production Data from 2005-2012". Its slides say the analysis, by Laine Greenawalt, was based on the handwritten records of Dr. Ron Powell of Fox Paw Ridge Farm. According to the slides, the plantings went in between 2003 and 2006, only dropped fruit was collected, and collection happened morning and evening. For each collection the record noted five things: the variety, the tree location, the date, the total number of fruit, and the total fruit weight.

The same data later appeared in the Journal of the American Pomological Society as "A Retrospective Analysis of Pawpaw (Asimina triloba [L.] Dunal) Production Data from 2005-2012" (Greenawalt, Powell, Simon and Brannan). Its abstract covers 52 cultivars in southwestern Ohio and reports that the harvest season ranged from 31 days in 2005 to 74 days in 2010, with most fruit harvested in September. The point for a home grower is not the findings. It is that five plain fields, written by hand over eight seasons, were enough for researchers to analyze years later. Notice what carried the weight: a tree identity (variety plus location), a date, a count and a weight.

The record sheet

Here is a sheet in the same spirit, with a few additions that cost almost nothing. Each row is one tree on one picking day. Copy these as column headings in a notebook or spreadsheet.

• Tree ID: a short code that is unique and never reused, such as P-07 for the seventh pawpaw. This is the field everything else hangs on. If a tree dies, retire its number instead of giving it to the replacement.
• Cultivar or source: the named cultivar, "seedling", or "unknown". Write "unknown" when you do not know. A guess recorded as fact is worse than a blank, because it gets averaged into every conclusion later.
• Date: the actual day of the pick, with the year. Harvest windows shift from year to year, and the date is what lets you see it.
• Count: the number of individual fruit or nuts, actually counted. If you only estimate (for example buckets, or a counted sample scaled up), put that in a separate "estimate" field marked as estimated, never in Count. Counting is slow for nuts, so decide once whether you count or only weigh and stay with it.
• Weight: total weight in pounds or kilograms for that tree on that day. A kitchen or luggage scale is enough. Say which unit you use in the first row of the sheet and never switch. For nuts, also say what you weighed: husked or unhusked, in-shell or kernel, fresh or dried.
• What you counted: for example "dropped only", "picked ripe from the tree", or "all fruit incl. damaged". This is the field most home records forget, and it changes what the numbers mean. Brannan's slides state that only dropped fruit was collected, and that rule is part of the data: the same counts mean something different under a different rule.
• Condition: a one-word grade for the fruit (good, fair, poor) and, if relevant, why (animal damage, split, frost, insect). Two words are plenty.
• Notes: anything unusual about that tree or day, such as a heavy bloom frost, a limb that broke, a drought spell, or a neighbor tree that finally flowered.

Why each field is there

Every field exists to answer a question you will eventually ask. Tree ID and date answer "which tree, and when". Count and weight answer "how much", and keeping both lets you spot a tree that sets many small fruit versus one that sets a few large ones. The "what you counted" field answers "can I trust this number against last year's", which is the question that quietly ruins most home data. Condition answers "was this a good crop or only a big one". Cultivar answers "is this a tree problem or a variety problem", and it is why the sheet records where a name came from rather than just a name.

Two additions are worth considering once the basic sheet is a habit. The first is a yearly line per tree (not per pick) for tree size, such as trunk diameter at chest height, because a research team that tallied fruit by size class for each tree in an Ohio State University study of pawpaw productivity (the slide deck "Variation in Pawpaw Cultivar Productivity and Quality Across a Biogeographic Gradient in Ohio", by Sarah Francino and colleagues, with Ron Powell among the collaborating farmers) reported that total fruit number was affected most by tree size. A bigger tree producing more fruit is not a better cultivar. The second is a flowering note each spring, because a tree that flowered heavily and set little tells you something different from one that never flowered.

Worked example (illustration only: all numbers invented)

The figures below are made up to show how the sheet reads. They are not real yields from any orchard, and they say nothing about what a pawpaw or persimmon tree should produce. Imagine a small backyard planting with three pawpaw trees, P-01, P-02 and P-03, and one American persimmon, D-01. Units are pounds, and counts are dropped fruit collected daily while the trees are ripening (ripe pawpaws spoil within days and animals find them fast), with missed days and known losses noted.

• 2025-09-08, P-01, cultivar name from nursery tag, 6 fruit, 4.1 lb, dropped only, good, notes: first drops of the year.
• 2025-09-08, P-02, source unknown (seedling, planted 2018), 2 fruit, 0.8 lb, dropped only, fair, notes: small fruit, raccoon chewed one.
• 2025-09-15, P-01, same cultivar, 9 fruit, 6.3 lb, dropped only, good.
• 2025-09-15, P-03, cultivar name from nursery tag, 0 fruit, 0 lb, notes: flowered in spring, no fruit set.
• 2025-10-20, D-01, seedling, count not taken, estimate approximately 40 fruit, 11 lb, picked fully soft and ripe, good.

Read across a season, even this tiny invented sheet suggests questions. Why did P-03 flower but set nothing? Was P-02's low weight about the tree or about the raccoon? Is P-01 simply the heaviest producer, or is it the best-positioned for sun? None of those questions has an answer yet, and the sheet does not pretend otherwise. After three or four seasons, though, the same rows start to answer them: the same tree with the same low count every year suggests investigating that tree or its site (shade, pollination, a poor graft), while a one-year dip across all trees suggests investigating something shared, such as weather or a change in how the planting was managed. The notes column is what separates the two.

Tie the sheet to a physical tree

A record is only as good as the link between its row and the actual tree. Three layers work together, and a small orchard should use at least two.

1. 1Tag the tree. Use a durable label with the Tree ID, fastened loosely so it does not girdle the trunk or branch, and check it each spring. Aluminum or plastic tags with the ID scratched or printed on them last longer than paper. Write the ID in a second place, such as a stake beside the trunk, because tags fall off.
2. 2Draw a map. A hand-drawn plan with row letters and tree numbers, dated, kept in the notebook, is the oldest and most robust version. Brannan's slides list "tree location" as one of the five recorded fields, which is this idea in its simplest form. Record distances from fixed landmarks like a gate or building corner so you can re-find a tag-less tree.
3. 3Photograph it. One photo of each tree each year, with the tag visible, gives you a second proof of identity and a growth record. File the photo under the Tree ID, not under the date.

Common ways records fail

• Tree numbers get reused after a tree dies, so two different trees share a history. Retire numbers permanently.
• Units drift: pounds one year, kilograms the next, "buckets" a third. Put the unit in the header and keep it.
• The collection rule changes without being written down, for example dropped fruit one year and tree-picked fruit the next. The numbers still look comparable, but are not.
• Missing zeros. A tree that gave nothing is information; write the row with 0 instead of skipping it.
• Unknown cultivar entered as a confident name. Record "unknown" and fix it later; a wrong label spreads through every year of the record.
• Too many fields. If you stop filling a column, delete it. A sheet with six fields filled in for ten years beats one with fifteen abandoned in the first season.

Records of this kind describe what happened to each tree in your site and season. They do not predict what another orchard will get, and they are not a yield promise. Variation between trees, years and sites is the reason to keep them.

Paper first, app if you want it

Do this on paper or in a spreadsheet first. If the habit sticks and the notebook starts to fill, a digital version helps with the parts paper is bad at: photos that stay attached to the right tree, a map you can open in the field, and totals per tree without redoing arithmetic. CanopyTwin is one option for that. It maps each tree on your property and keeps that tree's photos, notes and harvest history together on an iPhone, with a 30-day free trial. It is optional; the sheet above works without it, and consistent Tree IDs make a later move to any tool easier (check the destination's import options first).