Passionfruit Trellis Ideas

[Triloba Tracker]

I set up my Passiflora trellis yesterday.

Drove 2 metal fence posts about 5 feet apart and ran cable horizontally across at heights of 2 feet and 4 feet.

Now my dilemma is whether to plant my vines directly in the ground or in containers. I don't really want to do above-ground containers because I don't want to have to protect them in the winter, but I am concerned about the aggressive spreading of the vines if I plant in the ground.

Does anyone have thoughts on whether the spreading could be halted by physical barriers in the soil around the main planting site?
In this thread folks are saying the roots are very shallow and come up easily, so would metal edging or some other kind of shallow physical barrier stop runners?

I have also thought about just planting it in a pot (plastic?) and just burying the pot. But if the plant can spread and get invasive thru the drainage holes in the pot, then I guess the whole idea is moot - i'd just have to fight the runners as best I can.

[Viking Guy]

Every spring while mine are dormant, I just take a sharp shooter spade and plunge the soil in a circle 24" from the vines base and only once had a shoot pop up (at the fence line).

I grow mine along a fence and keep them controlled.  They are in ground for years and no issues.

If you do pots, they'll die back anyhow, so same concept--just nip the trunk and take inside and put it back out the following year or put in ground.

One thing you can do (I did this also) is harden the dirt underground.  After digging the hole, make smooth, clean cuts on the circle and pat them down.  Roots will tend to bend back inside.  Makes a nearly natural inground "pot."

That said, there is a nursery nearby that is growing one the way you'd grow a Dragonfruit in their greenhouse.  They let it reach the top and go to weeping.  Then trim the vines once they hit the ground.  It looks awesome and I am planning to try it this year.

[Triloba Tracker]

Thanks so much, Adam.....I had the same thought after posting, about just spading the area around the plant. I like your thought of digging the holes in a "natural pot" manner as well.
I've done more reading this afternoon and more and more I'm not worried about it spreading out of control.

Next step is just to order the plants...I want to focus on P. incarnata, so rather than getting another species for pollination, I plan to order one from Logees and one from Edible Landscaping to ensure (surely!) that they are genetically different.

[Waterfall]

I just finished netting our vine, either possums or birds were eating the flowers but its looking like the net has done the trick.

[Jexton]

I use a simple multi strand wire between two posts rammed two feet in the ground with supports to stop them pulling over with the weight. The amount of cables you want depends on how far apart you are comfortable with. I usually separate them anywhere from 18" to 2' . The passionfruit vines or virtually anything for that matter will find their own way up.

That's pretty much the same set-up I have. 5 post with Dragonfruit in each post and Passion fruit vines going up the end posts as well as out of the center post.

[Doglips]

Mine are potted so I have no direct experience, but I have read numerous horror stories of people battling the in ground invasion.

[Triloba Tracker]

This may be really stupid but I found 2 10 inch diameter straight-sided plastic pots, cut the bottoms out of them, buried them flush with the ground, and backfilled with dirt. I plan to plant one vine in each "pot" and hope this will contain the runners.

I just ordered my vines from Logees - to my surprise, they have a normal purple Maypop and a white flowering variant too. So I ordered one of each for cross-pollination, and this way I will be growing 100% incarnata

I haven't been this excited in a while.

[Triloba Tracker]

The 2 or 3 wire way allows you to see what's going on and trim off runners going the wrong way.When they climb on a tree or fence and are let go for too long they can become tangled and unruly and very hard to remove.

Here are finally some pictures of what I did. Two metal posts with 2 wires running across, one wire about 2 feet from the ground, and one about 4 feet.





The chicken wire is to keep the rabbits off of them.

My question is, now that the vines have reached the lower wire, what do I do with them? Do I just let them go wild? Do I try to direct the main growth horizontally along the wires, or do I guide the vines to continue growing vertically to the top wire?

I thought the thing to do was train them to go horizontally on the wires, but from some brief research I am now wondering if they need to go up, and I need to look for side branches to train along the wires.

This is my first time growing a Passiflora so I just don't know - all help appreciated!

[Waterfall]

You can let it get to the top wire then pinch out the tip, this will send many laterals for horizontal training. The thing is though it will fill that trellis in no time once peak growth season starts.

One vine can completely fill a 9m fence in one year in my experience, that one I posted above is only 1 year old.

[Viking Guy]

Just hedge it to the size of your arrangement.

It will fill that space in and make a big square hedge.

[JoeP450]

On one side of my back yard I have a hedge of podocarpus about 7ft tall and I planted two possum purple 10ft apart and have been allowing them to use the podocarpus as a trellis. The passion fruit are growing well and I just liked the idea of a "living trellis"

-Joep450

[horseshoe_bayou]

Just hedge it to the size of your arrangement.

It will fill that space in and make a big square hedge.

does passion fruit benefit from training? producing higher yields etc the way grapes are pruned? most people I've seen just let them grow wildly on a fence.

[echinopora]

If you are doing any amount of wire trellis a few gripples and a gripple tool or vice grips wired to a 6 foot levering post are invaluable.  I get the knockoff version of a gripple at the ag store for 1.20 each. Makes is real easy to re tension things, on short runs use medium tensile wire though, high tensile needs too much adjustment on short runs. Works awsome for espalier, grape and passionfruit trellises. Just make sure your end braces/deadmen are strong/heavy, you can really tighten down a wire with those things. Gripple makes a deadman rig that looks like a shovelhead that you pound into the ground a few feet. I used a d shackle attached to a support beam from an ibc container to the same effect. That way if I ever move I can just sever the cable to the deadman plate a few inches under the ground, pull the posts and it's back to nice sterile lawn that everybody loves.