I’m Growing A Passionfruit!

I’m growing a Passionfruit!

One lonely little Passionfruit : (

Every Summer I get all excited when I see these.And then I get all disappointed when absolutely nothing comes of it.

No crinkled, deep purple fruit to cut into. Nothing. That gorgeous, statement flower just withers away and leaves us empty handed.

I know what the problem is, our vine isn’t easily accessible to the bees and other natural pollinators.

Unfortunately our climate is less than tropical and also frost prone so we’re growing our Passionfruit vine in our big greenhouse.

Which is actually going well, with a large, lush, green plant that is happily spreading everywhere.

This vine has been through a lot in it’s life, relocated a number of times just to find a space warm enough and sheltered enough to let it grow.

But it’s final destination has it’s own limitations. It doesn’t normally fruit because the bees aren’t coming across it in their travels with it tucked away in the corner of the greenhouse.

It is possible to help a Passionfruit vine along in the fertilisation stakes. When the plant flowers you can use a small, feather light paintbrush and carefully cross pollinate the flowers by hand.

I’ve yet to try that method though since I’ve been hopeful that something would happen without my help and finally, this Summer, we seem to have got lucky (ish).

Hiding behind a large, glossy green leaf was this lonely little guy.

I literally squealed with delight when I saw it and have been checking it daily to see if it’s going to mature and become that special fruit of the gods (in my opinion).

I’m not sure if it will happen because we’ve had the WORST Summer, and now in the early days of Autumn things have gone even more steadily down hill. In fact in less than 2 weeks we’ve had a 1 in 100 year rain storm which flooded parts of our city, and then a sub tropical cyclone which brought even more rain with it.

I haven’t got high hopes for my poor little Passionfruit but I’m watching and waiting anyway.

And my worst case scenario is that it doesn’t fully ripen but I can use the seeds for starting more vines. Passionfruit vines only do well for between 5 and 7 years and this old boy is coming up to retirement so I need to get some young plants ready to take over.