Zone 5 passionfruit experiments

[NickD]

From what I've read, p. ligularis doesn't drop like most other passionfruit, you just pick them when they've finished turning orange.

[mbmango]

Shell is stiff but brittle, and the pith is really light and airy. Taste is mild and sweet, very little acid. Fragrant, but not floral like Mission Dolores. Daughter said it was like apple. The kicker for us was that the seeds were light and airy too. Thin shells, and not meaty, so they easily dissolved away with little chewing. An overall pleasant experience.

[ScottR]

Shell is stiff but brittle, and the pith is really light and airy. Taste is mild and sweet, very little acid. Fragrant, but not floral like Mission Dolores. Daughter said it was like apple. The kicker for us was that the seeds were light and airy too. Thin shells, and not meaty, so they easily dissolved away with little chewing. An overall pleasant experience.

Nice that you have fruited p. ligulairs they look much oranger that one's I've bought a local swap meet from Mexico I assume. Where did you source seeds or plant?

[mbmango]

The one did seem very ripe, so perhaps I should pick them earlier before they get so orange? I got seeds of ligularis and laurifolia from Maui Seeds, via Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/shop/mauiseedcompany/
I just tried a 10 pack of each, and got 8 ligularis and 5 laurifolia vines out of it, so that was a pretty good rate for me. I had also acquired 2 ligularis seedlings from another forum member here, but those vines didn't seem to acclimate well, and they got overtaken quickly by the new kids. I'm going to try 1 more batch of laurifolia. They did so well in the pots, but I apparently didn't plant them well. Only 2 nubbins left barely hanging on.

[ScottR]

Ok nice glad they sprouted well for you it's hard some times to get fresh seeds.

[NickD]

First hard-ish freeze expected tonight. We've had some 32F freezes so I already brought in my ligularis, edulis and manicata, but colvillii, caerulea and incarnata are still outside. Incarnata still has about two dozen fruit on it (with a dozen harvested) so given the 28F low forecast, I think I'll through a tarp over it to make sure it gets it through the night. After that, we should have a good stretch of days in the upper 50s to high 60s with nights in the 40s, so I'm hoping the plant can take advantage of that for more fruit to ripen. The past few days have been quite cold (days in the 40s, nights in the 30s).

[NickD]

Last passionflower opened on Oct 31, after having sustained a couple -4C freezes.



I've been tracking the daily blooms - this is a 7 day moving average. Some plants bloomed all season, others had a more limited bloom period, but passiflora colvillii is only a few months old, so I'd expect it to bloom earlier and more abundantly next year.

[NickD]

I decided to bring my passiflora incarnata indoors about a week ago because it still had a fair bit of fruit on it left to ripen. It had already withstood temperatures down to about 23F, but since outdoor temperatures are now mostly only in the 40s-low 50s during the day, I don't think the ripening was progressing much, so I untangled if from the fence, wrapped it around a tomato cage and brought it to a south facing window.



About half the fruit ended up falling off as I was handling the vines... so I guess a lot of them were just about ripe after all. And then the rest of the fruits ripened and dropped off the plant within a few more days.



I just had the last couple for dinner.


Total harvest from the one plant was 40 fruits, weighing an average of 28g (1oz), and range of 13-51g, for a total of 1129g (2.5 lbs). They began to set fruit from about July 10 to Aug 10, and ripened from about Sep 10 to Nov 10, so it seems like the cooler temperatures in October slowed down the later setting fruits' ripening process.

[Tropicaltoba]

Awesome work man, I did some research and in commercial plantings for p. Edulis they typically get 50 Fruits per vine.

[NickD]

Awesome work man, I did some research and in commercial plantings for p. Edulis they typically get 50 Fruits per vine.

Interesting, I'm a bit surprised they don't get more, considering how big p. edulis can get. Mind, you it varies a lot from plant to plant, when I was in Madeira, I saw some plants that were very large, spanning across 15-20ft pergolas, and others that were much smaller, like a small clematis, but still mature enough to have fruit.

[Tropicaltoba]

I think they could get more but I think from a maintenance and harvesting efficiency standpoint or a commercial trellis that was the goal. Similar to grapes I guess.

[NickD]

I think they could get more but I think from a maintenance and harvesting efficiency standpoint or a commercial trellis that was the goal. Similar to grapes I guess.

Could be - most farms don't seem to have individual plants running on endlessly and have them fairly close together and compact on their trellisses.

[mbmango]

Good job on the fruits!

All my ligularis vines are in the middle of blooming, so I'm wondering if they're triggered by temps or daylight.  Hopefully they go on cue this coming spring.

The new laurifolia seeds sprouted >80% (31/38, they sent a lot of extras this time), which was way better than the 30% from my own ligularis fruit (7/24).  Also, I had almost given up on this spring's PSI seeds, but finally 1 miniata sprouted after 7 months.

[NickD]

Good job on the fruits!

All my ligularis vines are in the middle of blooming, so I'm wondering if they're triggered by temps or daylight.  Hopefully they go on cue this coming spring.

The new laurifolia seeds sprouted >80% (31/38, they sent a lot of extras this time), which was way better than the 30% from my own ligularis fruit (7/24).  Also, I had almost given up on this spring's PSI seeds, but finally 1 miniata sprouted after 7 months.

It's funny (and frustrating) how long it can take sometimes... I had some seeds from fruit I tried to germinate in mid-May, they had low germination rate, only about 1/20 after a few weeks, but then a second one in October, 5 months later.

[NickD]

I was just donated several passifloras that are new varieties to me. If you're familiar with them, what have you found to be the hardiness of the aerial portion (vines) and of the roots?

Alato-caerulea (p. belotii)
Inspiration
Pole Star
Passiflora citrina

I have three options for how to store them. One is at room temperature in a south facing window or under grow lights in my basement, but space is limited there, so I only want to do that if absolutely necessary. Second is in the root cellar, which will be around 5C to 8C (low-mid 40s) during the winter, currently there is no light there although I can install some. Third is the garage, which could see uninterrupted temperatures below freezing for days if not weeks this winter, but still above -10C/15F (last winter was mild and my first winter in this house and the coldest it got was -4C to -3C (mid 20s) for about 2 weeks).

[NickD]

Alato-caerulea I've seen conflicting information about online. Some suggests it is hardy to zone 8, which would be similar to caerulea, in which case it should be okay in the cellar, maybe even in the garage. Other sources say it's hardy to only zone 10, in which case the garage is out of the question and even the 5-8C cellar might not be ideal, depending on whether it can withstand that sort of chilly dormancy.

Inspiration is incarnata x cincinnata like incense, so I assume it's hardiness is similar? Does that mean that a hard freeze of around -5C will cause the foliage to die back similar to incarnata? Currently it's in the garage where it's still 6C, but it will get colder next week (possibly sub-0C) and it could get significantly colder in the depth of winter... can the root system survive if the container freezes all the way through? I assume there will be no issue with the 5-8C root cellar though, even if there's minimal light?

Pole Star seems to be a less widely distributed hybrid, and I haven't been able to find any information on hardiness. It's a hybrid of Odette and Iridiscence, so it should have around 40-50% incarnata genetics, but also a fair bit of kermesina and miersii, and a bit of edulis and cincinnata.

P. citrina appears to have poor tolerance for cold, perhaps even the cellar is too cold, since it's unclear if it can adapt to dormancy? For the time being, it's in a south facing window at room temperature, since the plant looks like it's fairly weak and it's small and doesn't take up too much space.

[NickD]

Just got my first flower on my passiflora citrina, it's by a south facing window with a grow light to provide additional light since we're only averaging about 50 hours of sunshine per month right now.

[Tropicaltoba]

Interesting, My p. Edulis looks like it’s just about to flower as well. Oct-Dec was unusually cloudy here,  I do have supplemental lights as well. One year I did get a December crop but it must have been a sunny fall.

How did you determine how many hours of sunshine you have?

[Tropicaltoba]

So even in my over engineered 4 season greenhouse with supplemental lights my p.edulis just started flowering 2 weeks later than yours so you seem to have it figured out.

[NickD]

So even in my over engineered 4 season greenhouse with supplemental lights my p.edulis just started flowering 2 weeks later than yours so you seem to have it figured out.

The grow light turns on from about noon to midnight.

My hours of sunshine is a rough estimate.

The closest town to me averages 55 hours for December according to Environment Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelph#Geography

You can divide the monthly sunshine hours by % possible sun to get daylight hours for your latitude

Based off that, monthly daylight hours for the indoor season here are

Oct: 343 hrs
Nov: 292 hrs
Dec: 280 hrs
Jan: 289 hrs
Feb: 295 hrs (sunnier than Nov but there's 2 fewer days)
Mar: 369 hrs
Apr: 402 hrs
May: 456 hrs

Then I just do rough estimates of what percentages of each day has been overcast vs sunny. This January, we had 20 overcast days, 3 mostly cloudy days, 3 roughly 50/50 days, 3 mostly sunny days, and 2 full sun days. That works out to about 6.5 full sun day equivalents, so 6.5/31 = 21%. 21% of 289 = 61 sunshine hours.

Sunshine hours so far during the indoor season based off my personal tracking

Oct: 213 hrs (many plants were outdoors for much of the month - it was quite warm and sunny compared to a typical October)
Nov: 71 hrs
Dec: 50 hrs
Jan: 61 hrs

Passiflora citrina seems to be more willing to flower indoors. My passiflora edulis (currently 24 months old) has only had 2 flowers in the fall so far, and stopped flowering once I brought it indoors - that second flower technically opened indoors, but it was already a very well formed bud when I brought it in, the many immature baby flower buds that were also on the plant got aborted. My passiflora edulis seems to be more tolerant of the low light indoor winter conditions than some of my other passiflora like p. manicata, and to a lesser extent p. ligularis which have dropped a lot of leaves, and in the case of p. manicata, a lot of the growth seems a bit weak and frail, but even though the edulis has a lot of green leaves, even further away from the light of the window, it seems to still be insufficient for blooms. The edulis doesn't get supplemental light though, since it's a much bigger plant than the citrina, and would be more difficult to illuminate fully.

The citrina just had those two blooms at the start of January, and then nothing for a while, but it looks like there are a couple more flower buds forming now that should bloom in a week or two?

The only other passiflora I had that bloomed indoors was p. incarnata, which bloomed in late March. The flower buds on it started to form in early March after a very sunny February.

[NickD]

Passiflora alatacaerulea beginning to bloom indoors too now.

[Tropicaltoba]

Looks beautiful.

So I took a cutting off my purple back in January, currently only 5’ long and already setting flower buds. Do your uncommon varieties flower so soon from seed? I assume it’s just like all grafted trees that flower sooner.

[NickD]

Looks beautiful.

So I took a cutting off my purple back in January, currently only 5’ long and already setting flower buds. Do your uncommon varieties flower so soon from seed? I assume it’s just like all grafted trees that flower sooner.

Incarnata and colvillii seem to be quick to bloom from seed - about that fast.

The others it seems take longer (edulis, caerulea). Many still haven't flowered at all yet (tripartita, manicata, ligularis).

Caerulea seems to bloom earlier from cuttings than from seed.

Regarding citrina, alatacaerulea, inspiration and polestar I'm not sure how old my plants are since they were donations from someone else that was scaling down her collection.

[NickD]

Passiflora inspiration fruit finally ripened. It came with an unripe fruit on it when I received it from another hobbyist in November, so it took over 5 months to ripen in the window light. She's not sure which of her passifloras pollinated it, so who knows what it will come up as, or if the seeds are even viable, but I'll give them a try.

[Tropicaltoba]

No offence but I hope it tastes better than it looks.