Growing Passion Fruit

Passion fruit is a fun plant to grow and if you're lucky enough to live in San Diego you can grow it in your own garden for the beautiful vine, the stunning flowers and the edible fruit. It originates in subtropical climates such as Brazil and will not survive in places where the temperatures dip below freezing. It requires full sun, regular water, well draining soil, and consistent feeding.

My neighbor purchased my passion fruit for me last August and it got off to a slow start. It was in full sun when I planted it in August but when fall came, our sun went so it didn't do much of anything until about February.  

Our passion fruit vine on fence in March 2011 

I was ecstatic when the first flowers started blooming

And then we finally got a fruit to develop

I am a little disappointed with how little fruit we have been seeing in relation to the number of flowers we have. I recently stepped up the water and fertilizer though and now we have more fruit setting. In my research I found a number of people who were having to hand pollinate their flowers and I thought that may be my problem but I see lots of bees on the plant so I think they're doing their job.

The fruit turns purple and shrivels up when ready

The yummy yellow goodness inside

The inner part of the fruit is what you eat and it is quite tasty. It is most often used in desserts, juices and cocktails. They do have lots of seeds to work around but they are popular even still.

The plant this morning

Passion fruit vines grow like crazy in the growing season. It's been 5 months since I took the very first picture above and our plant has completely enveloped our fence. I am pruning it back in some places now but it will continue to grow over our arbor and around the other side of the fence. Passion fruits live about 5 years and will need something to climb on during their life span.

The passion fruit from the outside of the garden

This fruit is developing right above the gate and it reminds me of mistletoe

The flowers are blooming like crazy and they always receive compliments from passers by

While the fruit production has picked up, I am still hoping to see more 

We have one fruit that's nearly ripe

We may need to wait another year to get really good results with the fruit production. They may be a fall surprise and continue producing this year, I'm just going to have to wait and see. This is a great plant to grow in San Diego if you can give it enough space to climb.

Gidget likes the fruits because they remind her of her favorite toy