Software
Houzz Logo Print
sajeew1

Passion Fruit in Canada

9 years ago

I have been growing passion fruit in my apartment in Ontario, Canada for the last three years. The climate allows me to keep the plants in pots year-round. The growing season is from April to September. Last year I had the plants flower for the first time. After manually pollinating them, I had 5 fruits.

This year I had well over 20 buds but only 10 flowers. The other buds did not grow, they fell off after a while. I again manually pollinated the 10 flowers. However, this year I had no fruits. The flowers would dry and fall off. Any idea as to what is causing the problem? My inclination is that there isn’t enough nutrient in the soil for fruits, even though the tree grows like crazy. Any advice from tropical fruit experts would be welcome.

Comments (7)

  • 9 years ago

    I'd suspect nutrient deficiency. But they like higher pH. They also like a lot of nitrogen for growth although flowers and fruit can become aborted with too much.

  • 9 years ago

    I think you need a really large pot. I've only grown passion fruit outdoors, but the plants get huge and can easily take over a 20 foot long wall. Feeding might help a bit, but they really want to make a huge root system.

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks for the reply guys. I currently have the plant on the
    window sill to maximize exposure to sun light. I keep trimming the plant to
    keep it within the window frame. I will definitely get a bigger pot if/when I
    move to a new apartment. I was really surprised that I could get the plant to
    fruit in the first place. The growing season is short and not enough sun light.

    I haven’t tested the soil for pH level. That is on the check
    list for next growing season. I use a water soluble 18-18-21 fertilizer with micronutrientscouple of times in spring and fall. I didn’t want to over fertilize. Since I
    was able to get buds and flowers, would that indicate that the amount of nitrogen is
    sufficient?

  • 9 years ago

    The first "18" in your fertiliser is Nitrogen, the "21" is Potassium.
    With the higher Potassium it does encourage more flowering. Higher
    Nitrogen gives you more leaf and vine growth. Probably not a good idea
    for indoors but Passionfruit likes poultry manure (aged). As it breaks down
    it produces some Ammonia which raises the pH. As a kid I remember my
    father used to grow a lot of it along the poultry run and we used to get
    tonnes of fruit.

  • 9 years ago

    Do you know which kind it is? any pictures of the flowers and fruit from last year? I am in Southern Ont (near toronto) and had to add another plant(yellow edulis). The fact that you had fruit already is surprising. It could be cooler temp or lack of light. Usually soil should not affect it if it's local soil or potting mix.

  • 2 years ago

    I was able to get over a dozen fruit from my maypop passionflower in Ontario. Also grown in container. I set it out along a fence outside in the summer so it has space to grow. But the fruits had to ripen indoors (on the vine, which I kept in a south facing window) because they ran out of outdoor growing season. I grew them from cuttings, which can result in fruits sooner than plants from seed. Maypops are self-sterile, so I had a bluecrown passionflower to pollinate it. I have other species (edulis, tripartita, ligularis) which will begin their second season now, no fruits yet, but hopefully I'll get some in 2024, since they are a pretty good size and should hit the ground running this summer.