Funny, my maypops didn’t flower this year at all, they are second year seedlings. I don’t think they will make it here in Seattle. They were mostly still barely 8 inches tall when they got knocked back by our first frost earlier this week.
I suspect that the combination of cool nights all year, dry summer, and short growing season, have conspired to do them in. And the fact they seem to be a top choice for some kind of local slug or snail when there is enough rain during the growing season for them to actually grow.
Here’s the only one that still is green after our frost (it’s in a pretty protected location so probably stayed just above freezing), and also was the second largest of my second-year seedlings this year:
mine took off pretty well despite the cruddy summer. all of the ones i potted up to 1 or 2 gallon vined out nicely and several flowered, albeit in August and Sept mostly.
I’m guessing your summer, despite being “cruddy”, probably had both highs and lows better than this? Other than one warm spell, the overnight lows were in the 50s all summer, as usual, and even a couple nights below 50°F.
I also did water them once in awhile, but not enough to keep them moist. We were in drought conditions most of the summer, so they were definitely mostly too dry to grow much, with the surrounding soil dry as desert sand when I planted other things in late summer.
Yeah I mean our summers here are cooler than some places that are zone 5 or lower on the east coast. For plants where heat units matter (and I’m guessing maypops fall in that category), it’s generally hopeless here despite being borderline zone 9a by the USDA zone methodology.
This one was picked still green, though no longer rock hard, in anticipation of frost. Good flavor, more aroma than the one I opened without leaking on the countertop. More sweetness as well, though still overall more sour than sweet. Once again, good pollination, which was probably the biggest concern.
Looking forward to next year’s vine ripened fruit.
I have several more, not sure they’re going to manage countertop ripening.
I wish I kept better track. This is your datalog, yeah? As I mentioned on other threads, we received nearly our entire annual average precipitation of 45” merely in July-Sept. October and November are typically pretty rainy, and we’ve had more like a typical amount of late. Along with that rain, which looked like multiple days of 1” plus rain per week, we got lots of cool overcast weather with few of the heat waved Ive come to expect in any given summer. We had some cool nights (days too) but the limiting factor (theres always one) for us was sunlight- there just wasnt much. We also had a hard frost May 18 that knocked a lot of stuff for a loop. My maypops were new from seed and a few from root cuttings, so all young plants. Im hopeful theyll get a jump next year, though Im still not clear that theres sufficient conditions here to actually ripen fruit. I had a few mostly unpollinated fruits that seemed like theyd have been far enough along, even though they were the result of blooms in mid-July or so. Im thinking site may make all of the difference there. Im imagining planting them against a building (house and shop both) Im thinking of covering the crown to give a little winter protection and prolong dormancy a bit. Im not sire how this will work out with maypop’s root suckering habit, but Im hopeful.
Pretty good. Sour, a bit aromatic, though less so than vine-ripened. The juice had some sweetness, but the arils were definitely on the sour end of things.
Feral ‘maypops’ are fairly common here.
I still have a good pawpaw double wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator pickked over 90 days ago, that is still green in color and I’m supposing still OK inside to eat. Unusual length of storage time.
Looks like I got 100% winter survival for the hybrids after an “8b” type winter, not bad. And since they’re not fully P. incarnata, two of them are already popping back up. Looks like dormancy isn’t nearly as strong on these.
We did have a near frost just a few days ago, so the dormancy could stand to be a little longer, but I guess a bit more mulch would probably fix that issue.
There are a couple here that do fine in zone 9. In zone 8b they require some covering a few nights each winter. Frederick makes an excellent greenhouse specimen in the PNW. Mine made fruit with no winter dieback and temps just above freezing.
That looks very similar to what our summer was like in Ontario 5b.
Monthly averages (2023)
May: 65.5/41.0F
Jun: 73.6/52.5F
Jul: 77.0/55.9F
Aug: 73.0/52.7F
Sep: 70.7/50.4F
Oct: 58.1/43.0F
I was able to get ripe maypop fruits here, but I grew the plants in a container. Start them as cuttings in the winter, then in early June when they were about 2ft long vines I planted them into their final container and set them against a trellis. They started to flower in late July, and the first flowers didn’t set, but after about a month (late August) they began to set fruit. Then in late October I had to untangle them from the trellis to bring the plants inside to protect them from frosts, and they ripened indoors in a south facing window by late November.
Now that the plants are on their second year and much larger in size, I’m hoping they can set fruit earlier.
Passiflora caerulea should be fully hardy in Seattle. They might have an advantage for ripening fruit by hitting the ground running in the spring (since the foliage/vines won’t die back in the winter), but I’ve heard they’re not very tasty. Maybe a hybrid that has the hardiness of caerulea but the taste of some other variety would work well?
