Last year, we planted several vines in our small garden to start growing passion fruit. We got some lovely fruit fairly quickly, and we were hopeful that this year would be even better. It looks like we’ve got our wish, despite facing some challenges with the stability of our trellis and the construction activity next door.
Growing Passion Fruit: Challenges
Our neighbors, who are total pros at growing passion fruit, warned us that we were going to get a lot of fruit from our vines. We planted three vines against a wall that had a chain-link fence going back many decades (so we are told). We reinforced the space with a wooden trellis because we knew the neighbor would eventually remove the shared fence. However, since construction has been ongoing for years (approximately 8 years, with three different owners, long before we arrived), we didn’t want to wait any longer to get our garden started.
Wouldn’t you know it, six months later, the fence came down. It took more than a month for the new one to sort of get into place. It’s still not there, but that’s a story for another day. The good news is that even though the roots of the passion fruit vines were exposed, there doesn’t seem to be too much damage. We filled in the gaps between the new concrete wall (don’t ask) and the plants with rich soil to help with the shock.
Results to Date:
While some fruit has fallen to the ground, and other pieces have come to feed the neighborhood critters, we’ve started gathering some terrific-looking passion fruit for ourselves and sharing it with the neighbors. We have 15 or 16 ready for eating, and every day, it looks like there is more that is ripe.
We’re pretty excited to start trying passion fruit curd, passion fruit salsa, and passion fruit margaritas. Also, Andy loves eating them off the vine, so that’s certainly on the menu, too.
So, while we have only been growing passion fruit in a small garden for about a year, we are thrilled to have vines that appear to be thriving despite the construction tumult and the unusual weather that surrounds Venice.
To read more about the history of our passion fruit project, visit us here.