Grafted passionfruit are said to fruit earlier and better, but for my money I’d rather grow them from seed. My first passionfruit plant was a grafted ‘Nelly Kelly’ that I bought from my local nursery. Much to my dismay, this plant never yielded me one passionfruit! What it gave me was hours of weeding out the suckers from one end of the garden to the next. It was then that I vowed never to get another grafted plant again but grow it from seed instead.
Passionfruit only last about 7 years so it’s important to get some stock growing well before your last one dies. Before I finally gave up on the ‘Nelly Kelly’ I got started on a some seeds that I got from Diggers Club for a common black passionfruit, Passiflora edulis. There weren’t many seeds and they took a long time to germinate, maybe up to one month. So be patient if you try at home!
Being a vigorous climbing plant, a passionfruit can take over pretty quickly and can be a pain to keep tidy if left unpruned. If it’s not pruned then it becomes less productive and woody. So it’s important to train the vine onto a very secure support to get the most out of your plant.
I germinated the seed in spring and then planted the seedling into a 100mm pot to get a bit bigger. It was quite slow to start with, perhaps I didn’t give it enough compost in the potting mix to boost it along. But for the first year I only got one long shoot. This becomes the main trunk of the plant and the base for which all the next year’s growth comes from.
By the second spring, I planted my shoot out into the garden and enriched the soil with compost and mulch. This gets everything growing now and forms the framework for the entire plant. Pinch out the tip of the shoot and attach the side shoots horizontally to the vertical plane to encourage the main branches to grow. These branches will alternate along the main trunk of the plant (the bit that grew for the first season). You won’t get any flowers yet, so again be patient! It’s important to shape your vine like this because it’s going to make pruning a whole lot easier in the long run and your plant’s going to produce some mighty fine fruit if you do.
By the third spring, i.e. 2 years after sowing the seed (yikes, it takes that long!) you will get lateral shoots from the branches. These are the fruiting limbs (finally!). Flowers develop all the way down these limbs at the leaf axil. Let these limbs just fall in front of the main branches rather than letting them get tangled in with the rest of the plant. This can become somewhat difficult with very opportunistic tendrils finding anything to cling onto as soon as they touch it. You should bear fruit from this lateral growth every year now.
After harvesting fruit in autumn or winter, leave the plant to loose it’s leaves if you’re in a cool area because they act like a semi-deciduous plant. If you’re in warm temperate climates the leaves will stay green all year round.
In early spring it’s time to prune before the new growth takes over. You want to now trim back all your lateral growth from last season to about 3 leaf nodes. By doing this you shorten the laterals back close to the main branches. You’ll see the framework of the vine now. The laterals will start to put on growth with a vengeance, so now you simply do what you did last season and let the laterals hang down towards you and watch them flower. Flowers will only be produced on the new growth so if you don’t prune back last year’s branches, you’ll start getting growth starting from the tips of last year’s laterals. Each lateral is capable of growing 1 to 1 1/2 metres (yards) per season. Without pruning you’ll end up with 3 or 4 metre (yard) long branches with flowers only on the last 1/2 metre (yard) and the rest of the vine will get all woody and hard to hold up.
Good pruning means that very spring you keep taking the laterals back to the main branches to within about 20cm (8 inches) of the branch. This way it stays vertical rather than sprawling all over the place and encourages more flowers and fruit.
Remember passionfruit needs enriched soil with loads of compost and mulch every year, but don’t give too much manure otherwise you’ll end up with lovely green leaves but no flowers. Also choose a self-pollinating variety if you only have space to grow one vine. One vine can grow 2 meters (yards) high and have main branches reaching 6 metres (yards) along a fence or support structure.
Vine trained and pruned – check.
Flowers pollinated – check (make sure there’s plenty of bees around).
Fruit is on it’s way to maturity – check.
All that’s left to do now is to find that old recipe for passionfruit yo-yo biscuits … YUM! YUM!
This is the most helpful website I have come across for training and pruning passionfruit. Thank you.
G’Day Wendy,
I’m and Aussie living in the northern San Diego area in a Pacific Coastal town called Oceanside, Hubby and I have been trying to grow some decent Passionfruit vines, unfortunately not muchluch the past 3 years. I really miss the PV, love to make my own vinaigrette recipe, my step daughters love it, not to mention the neighbors etc. The ground in our backyard has a lot of clay, so we tried containers with really good bagged soil, that wasn’t much better. Is there something I should feed them? Getting a bit weary of buying new plants every year. Many thanks for your time.
Regards,
John & Sam Perales.
Passionfruit have quite an extensive root system so they struggle to get enough water and nutrients when grown in pots. I would suggest you look at a raised garden bed to compensate for the drainage issues with clay while giving enough room for the roots to grow. They need plenty of nitrogen to get established so chook poo would be good. A yearly feed with good organic compost and cow manure will work a treat from second year. Monthly sprinkle of rock dust or some sulphate of potash will ensure flower and fruit set after the vine has grown.
I was about to give up on my 2 year old passionfruit vines until I came across your site. Now i know when and how to prune them and to be patient. Thanks.
Good luck, hopefully they’ll be fruiting soon.
There was no plan with our passionfruit hence they are rampant. Am I able to do an extremely heavy prune so I may be able to train the side shoots horizontally then let the laterals grow downwards?? We live in Brisbane and whilst one plant has performed extremely well, the other is not faring as good.Love your detailed instructions.
Yep I’d definitely give it a go. Good luck.
Thank you for such detailed instructions – I’ve just transplanted a one-year old vine, which I cut back hard. I’m planning on growing it on a pretty small frame (1.5x 2.4m) as this is the only space I have. I’ll need to keep pruning it to size – will I still get fruit, or am I wasting my time? You can see the frame and plant here:
http://mymauritiangarden.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/garden-update-5-july-2013-2/
I don’t know what variety it is, as our local nursery here in Mauritius had them labelled “yellow” or “purple”. Mine’s purple if that’s any help!
Thanks again, Veronique
I just moved into an apartment with a courtyard and love to plant one in perhaps a large box. Would that be enough for the root system to spread. I don’t have enough room to make a raised garden bed as it is mainly sealed. I have a lattice that I can train it on to. I just bought a Ned Kelly. I live in Perth. And what is rock dust? I do have sulphate of potash.Thanks
Hope to hear soon.
Hi Veronique,
It’s good to cut back hard when transplanting so you’ll be off to a good start (yes, so much better in the tropics).
The frame will probably be too small but you could reduce the size of the plant by tip pruning as it gets bigger than the frame.
Remember to encourage the laterals to fall forward and then prune these each year as they are the fruiting ones.
It may take a year to produce now, so be patient.
Good luck!
Passionfruit tend not too do very well in a pot because they’re roots spread so much.
If that’s your only option, however, give it a go with the biggest pot you can find.
I’ll need plenty of moisture and liquid feeding and you could use sulphate of potash to encourage flowering.
Rockdust is ground volcanic rock and gives a wider range of nutrients.
Good luck.
Love this excellent advice
I planted mine in yellow sticky clay in an almost metre cubed hole with 3 barrows of horse manure and 1 of compost. Fruit by next season, here in chilly Melbourne I was giving away literally buckets of them. As i gave it no fertiliser, horse poo is uite low NPK and yellow clay has good CEC butr low nutrient, I’m crediting it to a biologically rich and diverse soil. We’re renting here but hope to stay for 2 years; because they are such vigorous hungry growers and because they only last 5 years, I’ll throw one in the ground and will gamble I’ll get my money out of it, and happy to share with the next person. I’m doing fruit trees in massive pots to take with, but this is one fast, enthusiastic grower. There was time to train that one either; it just went for it.
Awesome results!
Hi iv just planted 2 Nellie kellies in my veggie patch against my fence,
Just wanted to know how much room I should leave because I’m also going to plant tomatoes in the same veggie patch, for example should I leave half a meter from the passionfruit plant to the tomato?
Thank you – zak
I don’t know what “CEC” is but boy do I ever have sticky yellow clay! When it’s not grey. What’s” CEC” ?
CEC=Cation Exchange Capacity. It’s the soil’s ability to release non-water soluble nutrients for plants to take up via roots.
Hi, Just asking is late September too late for a bit of pruning on my passionfruit vine .Thanks Lyn.
hi my name is chantel i have a nelly kelly grafted passionfruit plant its i think maybe its 6 or 8 months old and im confused to whats normal i have 3 stems growing out of the ground but from what i have read your meant to only have 1 main one growing or is it opk i have 3 that have growing ?????
No September should be fine
Anything growing below the graft should be taken off. So remove any shoot coming out of the ground at the side of the main plant.
Just leave the main shoot that is coming from above the graft.
Great write-up, thanks!
I am currently at stage 1, just single main shoot. It is just below the first run of my espalier framework and wondering how I am going to get the main stem to still go up to the 2nd run, but get 2 shoots at this level I can use to run across the first run?
By pinching the main shoot, should i do this at the tip, given i want it to keep going to the 2nd run also?
Any tips on how I should tackle this?
Thanks
hi, am from uganda, africa and here we grow passion fruit from seed to first fruit in 8 months. this is a native breed and not a hybrid and i wonder why your would take that long(2 years) to flower. unfortunately i dont knw any english names for our varieties but will be glad to inquire and have you updated.
Keep your main shoot growing until it reaches the top, then pinch out the tip to stop it getting any taller. This might take some time.
The side shoots for your branching will come next season from the leaf axil, just tie them down and attach to your structure then.
Hi Bria-,
Do you have any photos of your passionfruit? If you do maybe you could post them online for us to see. I am interested in what the fruit look like after 8 months.
In Australia, I planted a grafted variety known as the Nelly Kelly. I am in the South, which is much colder and the grafted variety is meant to be a rootstock which can withstand the colder environments and also be less disease prone.
What is the variety you have in uganda?
Admin, thanks a lot for the advice. The main stem has just reached the first run of the framework, so your advice came just in time! I was planning to pinch it as hope for multiple shoots at this point.
Two more questions if I may 🙂
1. Do I have to keep nipping the main shoot? I’m guessing it will keep shooting when I nip it as it reaches the top
2. Is there a method best used to selecting which shoots I should use for the horizontal runs? At the moment I am just planning to use the closest shoot next to the framework – not sure if this is the best approach
Thanks a lot for the help.
Richard
1. You won’t need to keep nipping the first main shoot. Pinch it out once it reaches the top of your framework and then growth is directed into the horizontal side shoots.
2. You are spot on with the side shoot selection. When the side shoot grows just tie it to the framework to keep it horizontal.
Thx Admin. Great & clear advice much appreciated.
Just planted a Norfolks Pride (black) grafted passionfruit with a young sweet potato about 1m adjacent. Good or bad idea?? Will the potato runners and tubers be too competitive / disruptive to the Flavicarpa rootstock of the passionfruit vine or should I plant the potato somewhere else?
I live in subtropical NSW and the garden bed gets plenty of sun. The raised bed is narrow (4m wide x 0.6m deep) between a concrete slab and a fence. About 300mm depth of good soil over clay. Pototo’s going crazy and PV is happy for now
Cheers, Brad
Hi, I planted a nelly Kelly passion fruit in about May this year. It is a grafted stem but I forget what variety the top is. I got it from bunnings warehouse. I planted it into a fairly small pot, maybe 40cm high by 40cm diameter too. We use an organic soil from an old man down to road, made from worm casting juice, mulch and compost mostly. I have been giving it about 1L of water mixed with a bit of chook poo mix we have every week. Plus the usual watering. Since May it’s gone gangbusters. I’m not training it for fruit so I’ve just been letting it do it’s own thing on the lattice. I recently had to transplant it I to a bigger pot, so I made a box for it 1m deep 60cm wide and 1m long that sits on the ground so it can continue growing as long as it wants really.
My questions are: why does the vine only last 5-7 years? I had been growing the vine mostly for a bit of shade on a wall, will I need to shoot new ones every few years to make sure the coverage stays good? Or do some freak vines or vines with enough food etc last longer?
And the really important question I have, can you buy live lady beetles in Aus? Or Sydney?
I need some for aphid patrol.
My vine is located in Sydney South too, if that matters.
Should be okay … fingers crossed!
Glad to hear everything is going gang busters.
Why does the vine only last 5 -7 years? Why do we only last about 80 years? Simple answer is … it just does.
There are many short lived perennial shrubs and passionfruit just happens to be in the short lived category.
Some short lived species like Acacias serve as pioneer trees to provide nutrients (via nitrogen fixing roots) and maintain a habitat for longer lived trees to get established, after about 7 years they die and rot down, adding humus to the soil and providing more nutrient for the trees to feed on. It’s just mother nature’s way of building an eco-system.
Your passionfruit, if treated well and regularly pruned so that it doesn’t go woody, may well last longer. When the vine gets old, long, lanky and woody, it becomes less productive and hard to maintain with most growth on the tips only. That’s usually at the 7 year mark if left unpruned.
If you want a longer lived vine then perhaps a choko might be better. Otherwise I would be getting some new ones growing every 5 years, then you can just cut back all the old woody bits and replace as needed.
You can buy lady beetles from http://ecoorganicgarden.com.au/product-category/backyard-buddies/
If you plant lots of flowers (Eco organic garden also have backyard buddy B&B seed mix) to attract the predators naturally.
Remember if you don’t have any food to keep the lady beetles there, then they will fly off somewhere else. So it’s good to have loads of flowers all year round.
Just give nature time to balance. I’ve had fruit trees totally covered in aphids, it took around 2 to 3 weeks for predators to start the clean up job but within a month the trees were clean without me using any sprays at all.
Admin, thanks for the advice above.
I planted my vine about 2 months ago and it’s shot up well – it’s about 1/2 a meter away from the point where I will pinch the main shoot (it’s grown quickly, I think i’m likely to have the horizontal shoots start in the first season). I’m already seeing small shoots, of about 2-3cm coming from the leaf nodes all over the vine. They are growing very slow though..
Just so i’m prepared, once I pinch the main shoot, should i immediately pinch all the other smaller shoots that i’m not planning to train horizontally? OR do you think I should pinch those now instead of waiting for the pinching of the main shoot?
Also wondering about fertilizers.. I see Jack’s chook poo has worked well (thanks Jack), but wondering what other great fertilizers the passions love? Once every week or two, i’ve been giving it some powerfeed seasol and that’s about it for now.
Great site, thanks for the wealth of information.
Cheers, Richard
Hi Richard,
Yes I would pinch out the unwanted side shoots at the same time as stopping the main trunk height.
This makes the plant put it’s energy into what’s left and hopefully will grow stronger.
Be careful with too much chook poo – very high in nitrogen and encourages shoot growth at the expense of flowers. It’s good to start the vine with but you should look at adding a good supply of potassium once it starts to flower.
Use compost every year and a mulch of lucerne hay is terrific. Also spread some potash with the compost.
Fish emulsions and seaweed solutions are terrific as a regular foliar spray or soil drench.
Brew up some microbe tea and pour diluted tea onto the soil for spectacular results.
cheers!
Thanks for all the advice on growing passionfruit. I just received a packet containing 19 purple passionfruit seeds from the diggers. I only have space in the garden for 1 plant along a fence though from the looks of how wide and tall only 1 grows. How many seeds should I plant to get started? Just one or several, and how far apart if more than 1? Should I plant directly where I want it to eventually grow or plant in a pot and transplant when the plant has reached a certain height? Any help would be much appreciated. I’ve never grown fruit from seed before!
obviously doing everything wrong, and have amazing results.
from the daily kitchen compost bucket, a couple of passionfruit seeds made it to the garden, a plant popped up after heavy rains two months ago, no pruning, nothing more than a few wires put up to let it spread, and to date, 50 fruit, and another 50 flowers – tendrils around 20 feet long in three directions, with heaps of new shoots tumbling over each other and more flowers / buds everywhere
seems like we have the perfect environment (full sun amongst palms and cycads) watering weekly now it’s a bit dry, with some organic extra as it must need some food
have noticed a few flowers not opening and falling off but considering what some people are going through, we feel very privileged – wish you all well, john
I love this response John from Medgeeraba! Sometimes it just happens in spite of us. Well done.
Michele, sow a few seeds (maybe half dozen) and select the best ones (maybe about 3) to pot on until it reaches about a foot high (30cm) and then plant one in the final location. Then you have 2 “spare” ones just in case the first one fails, if it grows then you have a couple of plants to give away.
Thank you so much for your wonderful information and I have enjoyed reading about everyone elses passion fruit dilemas. The mother in law is a little worried about the hard pruning I just gave her beloved non flowering vine but hopefully it will now produce fruit instead of excessive foilage. Seasons greetings to you all!
Greetings to you too!
Too much foliage may indicate an over supply of nitrogenous fertiliser (e.g. chook poo).
Apply some potassium rich fertiliser fertiliser to encourage flower and fruiting now.
Good supply is potash and/or blood & bone.
Hi what a great site thank you I live in Port Douglas and planted an unknown variety of passion fruit about 12 months ago, one lot had taken off and has lots of leaves and flowers, however the flowers don’t turn into fruit they just go brown and drop off. The other which I planted near the chook she’d has done nothing much. I don’t know how to load photos onto this site. Any advice would be really appreciated thanks Mandy
Thanks Mandy.
The flowers dropping off could possibly indicate a lack of successful pollination.
Make sure that there’s plenty of flowers to bring in the bees to help prevent this.
Also a good complete fertiliser that has potassium, silica and boron will support fruit set. Just look for one specifically formulated for flowers and you should be fine.
Hi Guys,
Just a little over 4 months and my Nelly Kelly Black has grown well. Below are some pics..
http://imageshack.com/a/img849/2816/rn7y.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img839/3020/cjlz.jpg
I’ve kept with a fortnightly alteration of Seasol and Powerfeed as well as mulching. Initial planting I did also mix through some blood and bone. There are some great suggestions on the forum of what to fertilize with, i’ve just not gone down this route as yet as I feel like it’s grown well over the last 4 months.
When I first planted the vine I had an issue with snails eating the leaves. I couldn’t find the snails though. So one early morning when I woke up to go fishing (like 3AM), I had a look and found two snails by the plant. I guess they liked to eat at night? Just a tip if you have a similar problem – I read that very early in the morning or late at night is a good time to look if you can’t find the suckers doing the damage.
I have two questions..
1. In the second picture I have circled a shoot that is appearing around most of the nodes on the top main branches (running horizontal across the top wire of the frame). Should I pinch this new growth to allow more energy to go to the main branches? I already pinched two of them and then stopped, as I got a little confused thinking “am I pinching the fruiting laterals”?
2. The two main branches at the top of the Espalier have grown really well. I let the main shoot grow right up, pinched it and then took two shoots that appeared near the top of the vine and trained them across horizontally. I pinched off all other shoots that I saw appear on the main shoot, except two that appeared around the middle of the espalier. For some reason the two shoots at the middle of the espalier are growing very very slowly in comparison (they are about 3cm and 5cm in length). Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to encourage those shoots to grow quicker?
Thanks, Richard
Oh.. one more question 😛
Some of the leaves toward the base of the passionfruit vine are old and looking dull (they’ve been around since I first planted the vine and were attacked by snails initially). They did have shoots appear just above the nodes, which I pinched as I wanted to let the energy go into the main shoot. Will these leaves eventually die back and out will come a new leaf in its place? If so, how can I tell the difference between a shoot that I should pinch and a new leaf which I should leave?
Thanks 🙂
Richard, you should leaves these shoots on. They will grow next season, as will the middle branches.
Yep, the leaves will eventually die back. Some plants are semi-deciduous, depending on the climate they’re grown in. Let the new shoot grow.
Thanks 🙂
How can I tell the difference between a fruiting lateral and a main branch though? Just curious as initially i pinched all the shoots like this that appeared along the trunk, apart from the 4 that I left to train along as main branches..
Oh, is that it? The fruiting laterals will only grow from the main branches and just keep pinching shoots that appear along the main trunk as these are more main branches?
Cheers, Richard
Hi Richard,
It’s confusing, I know. All the shoots look the same, it’s just how you prune them that determines the main branch and the laterals.
Your main branches will be trained horizontally and allow them to grow as long as your wall or structure will hold, then cut the end off (i.e pinch the tip).
Then all growth will come from the leaf axil along this horizontal branch, let these shoots grow and flop over the front of the wall, don’t pinch out anything.
It will be long! Eventually the flowers will come out of the leaf axil on the bit that flops over the front, so don’t keep pinching out the growth.
The flowers will only come on the current year’s growth, so the older main branches won’t flower for you. The photos look like you might need another year’s growth, so no pinching required.
Once it flowers, then you need to start curbing the growth. So cut back that current year’s growth after you harvest the fruit, cut it back towards the fence so that it sticks out about 30cm.
Hope that makes sense!
If in doubt … just don’t prune and watch what the plant does naturally and then get an idea of the cycles it goes through. Some plants will fruit prolifically without pruning or shaping, it just makes it hard work after a few years.
Was researching passionfruit growing when your site came up. Glad to have found it and read all comments esp. about pruning it. I have now achieved a few fruiting vines after 18 months approx.(about to eat the first passionfruit this week :-)) ) each in pots of about 70 cm height and 30 cm width. Have had to water every day or two as in subtropics but have found gross fertilising with nearly everything has worked. I started with a rich potting mix which i added different things like my left over bit -of- bag of tomato plant potting mix , left over bit -of -bag blood & bone.They have consumed fish emulsion , seasol & powerfeed, osmocote slow release fertiliser, worm tea ……. one of these every 2 weeks. They drink a lot of worm tea !!!
I do have bees but is it possible that the black ants on the vines could also be pollinating them? Do ants hurt the plants? One day this week there were heaps in one pot but not so obvious in days since.
Glad to hear you are doing so well. Well done, so far.
Ants are usually a sign of dry conditions, impending storm or sugary substances.
If the pots are looking moist enough then I suspect soft sappy new growth might be the culprit.
Soft growth attracts aphids (and others) that produce honeydew that ants feed on.
Lots of fertiliser can encourage soft growth so be careful not to overdo it with these.
Toughen up the new growth with seaweed solutions so that insects can’t attack it.
Good luck and enjoy your first fruits!
Thanks. I have just given it some seasol since reading your reply. All seems good. The fruit is beautiful:-))