Passionfruit are among the most productive of backyard crops. Here’s everything you need to know about growing them successfully.
Growing
Passionfruit love warm conditions and well-drained soil. Gardeners in temperate zones will have good and bad harvests depending on winter’s weather.
Choose a strong vigorous vine from your local nursery. Find a warm, sunny, sheltered spot with soil that drains well. Plant close to a trellis or fence. Passionfruit grow by tendrils and need a structure to twine onto. Wrapping a telegraphpole with some chicken wire to 3m high, and planting a passionfruit at the bottom, is a great way of using the verge outside your home! Nurture new plantings with regular water and a handful of chicken manure. Vines flower inspring and summer, with fruit ready to pick between late summer and winter. In temperate zones like Sydney, passionfruit may take 18 months to flower and fruit.
Care
Passionfruit need regular chicken manure, blood and bone and potash. Liquid potash is ideal. Water regularly during flowering and fruit production.
Prune in spring. Cut back one or two of the main stems to about a third, trimming the lateral stems and cutting out some of the denser growth. This will allow better air circulation and fruit development in the following season. Vines need to be replaced every five years or so, as they become straggly and non-productive.
The bane of passionfruit growers is the factthat many sucker, revealing the understock (Passifloracaerulea). This has much thinner, five-lobed leaves, a blue flower and no fruit! Remove suckers and if a vine dies make sure the entire rootstock is removed otherwise suckers will come up for years.
Troubleshooting
-
Fruit failing to form after flowering is due to poor pollination. Try pollinating with a paintbrush, and encourage bees by planting rosemary, lavender or borage in the vicinity.
-
Fruit failing to ripen can be due to late flowering and low winter temperatures. Try ripening fruit on a sunny windowsill.
-
Fruit falling from the vine is usually due to wet weather, lack of water or cold. Taste fallen green fruit in case it hasn’t coloured but is still ripe inside.
-
Reduce suckering by not digging near the vine.
-
Fusarium wilt is the main disease of passionfruit. The condition is less likely with grafted varieties. The first symptom of a fungal disease is wilting leaves and spotting on leaves and fruits, which then begin to fall. Use eco-fungicide and spray with Yates Anti-Rot.
-
Common insect pests of passionfruit are fruit fly and scale insects. Prevent with fruit fly traps and regular sprays of eco-oil.
We hope you have enjoyed this article so far.
One of the many benefits of Garden Clinic membership is full access to our website. Members please log in to view the complete articles.
If you are not a Garden Clinic member and wish to access our website as well as enjoy the many benefits of membership, including access to our Helpline 7 days a week, please visit the link below to join us.