Just grabbed a Panama Red from Toptropicals. Have their yellow sunset too but it arrived not happy/not healthy and is alive but not doing great…
So far this year, i have Purple Possum, Frederick, Black Knight, my now 2 year old seedling, the new sunset/probably Panama yellow, and 2 other ones I’ve lost tags to. Probably Red Rover and another purple possum from last year. I’ve managed to over winter these 3 now. My first year with passion fruit, i somehow managed to kill them in the winter.
Planning on putting these in 20 or 25 gallon nursery pots on wheels and moving them in and out yearly.
Last year, i found out they only fruit on new growth and cutting them back in the fall seemed to help keep them alive. My first year, i didn’t cut can as much and they widdled away. My panama red didn’t survive but then again… i accidentally forgot to water them for a whole 2 months. My seedling is now 2 years old and doing amazing. I’m assuming the other really happy one is purple possum cause I’ve let that one sit out in 30-32 degrees and it stayed alive in the past. Panama red started to die back at 34 degrees or i didn’t water it in time. One of those.
I’m determined to grow and fruit passion fruit here in the PNW and I’m planning on doing it better than when i grew, fruited, and ripened them in Colorado Springs with 2.5 months less of a growing season.
Those look amazing! I’m in 7a, so in the future I plan to plant hardy passion fruit (maypop) on the south side of a fence. I’ve heard passion fruits can try to take over! Do you have plans for or experience in putting in a root barrier to slow down its expanse? It looks like yours are in containers- is that your technique for not letting them take over or are the non-hardy varieties less aggressive?
Yes, i grow mine in pots cause I want to keep them alive year after year although i failed that year. I’ve been successful this year in overwintering them though!
And it does seem to help them from taking over while in pots and on their own trellis systems.
I’ve never tried, but I’ve also never got to try passion fruit. They are always rock hard in the stores here and my husband said they won’t be good like that.
They only fruit on new growth so you have to cut them back to keep them small and make them fruit. Or else you’ll have fruit 20+ ft from the base.
These white pots are between 11 and 15 gallon. I’m thinking of chopping them back and putting them in 20 gallons for the season. Even in a 10 gallon, they did pretty good but i wouldn’t do anything less than 10 gallons for them. In the summer, they drink A LOT so they have to have a saucer and it needs to be watered every day for a good harvest.
My purple possum defioliated at around 29 degrees in Winter 2023-24, but the stems didn’t die and it came back. They only had minor leaf drop this year even with a little frost. My yellow passionfruit has also done fine with the same temps, but it is always defioliated because of the caterpillars. For some reason, they go after the glossy leaf passion vines first, then the purple possum, and their last choice is the native passion vines. Go figure.
I also have a 1 year old Giant Granadilla (passiflora quadrangularis) seedling that I put in ground 2 weeks ago, and Sweet Calabash (passiflora maliformis) seedlings that I started in August. And a bunch of seedlings from a store fruit, between 20-30 of them.
Wow great job in containers! They look more like bushes than vines lol. I traded a white sapote for a variety called qinmi no.9 but will have to wait for it to fruit to see how it is.
Please tell me how it is! I saw you posting about that a bit ago while i was reading.
If by any chance you see a big panama yellow floating around, please let me know.
I had this amazing, giant yellow passion fruit when i was vacationing in Florida but i had no idea what it was. Should’ve saved the seeds but they were sooo good. Been on a hunt for those since
I found this, you could call them to found out if its Panama Gold, which sounds like what you are looking for. Unfortunately that variety seems to be bigger in Australia then here (or it at least isn’t sold under that name here), couldn’t find anyone selling plants in the US as Panama Gold. Did find a few seed sellers though.
Cody Cove Farms sells seeds for a Giant Brazilian Passionfruit. He has a video on them, they are pretty big.
Not sure if these are what you are looking for, but thats all I could find.
I have maypops on the south side of my house, and last year they started popping up in the lawn near the bed where I put them! I don’t mind this level of vigor, but it does mean that I need to be careful about what I plant with them. With this in mind, I decided to interplant mint with them so I could witness the epic battle between two botanical kaiju, like a horticultural Godzilla vs King Kong.
I’ve never tried homegrown tropical passionfruit, but I have eaten both storebought passionfruit and homegrown maypops. Storebought passionfruit is not worth anyone’s time, in my opinion. Even maypops, which some tropical connoisseurs don’t even consider passionfruit, tastes 100x more tropical and awesome then storebought passionfruit.
Do you trim the roots every year? I’m perplexed as to how people grow things with vigorous roots in pots.
My passionfruit progress this year so far. All Purple Possum on the same plant (I have two on this trellis). I need to find a good tasting maypop, they fruit through the winter here.
i have some of the ph maypop seeds trying to germinate. its not looking good though
if you were going passionfruit in a container would it be better to grow them in a circular column/mass(like around a tomato cage) or would you try to create a single layer plane? i will have to do them this way to keep them small enough to bring in the winter. asking because it would seem like if they are wrapped around a cage column one side wouldnt get any shade. maybe that doesnt matter and you would still get fruit on backside and it would ripen properly
My store bought fruit seeds I planted in May did nothing all summer, I saw tiny plants sprout and die in August, assumed it was the passionfruit so put the soil back into the mix, reused the soil, and by the end of October I had 50+ passionfruit seedlings sprouting in various containers not for passionfruit (you end up with a lot of seeds when you don’t know there edible). So they can take a while.
My weather right now is so hot I could feel my coffee plant transpiring when I walked by it. Felt like a heat vent. Supposed to cool off to the 70s next week though, you can be jealous then
and I’m planning on doing it better than when i grew, fruited, and ripened them in Colorado Springs with 2.5 months less of a growing season.
