Dear Lynn, although cool here my passion flower is doing well in the garden!

Neil.

I have tried growing them with zero success. Yours are lovely Neil.

Lynn, Passiflora incarnata (maypop) should thrive in your area. I can send you seed in a month or two...

I have tried several times. They germinate and start growing, but don't thrive. Eventually they just die. I don't know of any one here that grows them. I wonder if our growing season nights are to cold?

Dear Lynn, that one is the common or blue passion flower! It thrives here despite the cold winters but drops some leaves and becomes semi evergreen in very cold winters. We do not grow them from seed! Simply in the spring take a nice long cutting off and put them in a large jar or bottle of water where they will root! Simply pot them up gently in wet compost and they grow quite happily!
Hope that helps.

Neil.

Doubt it. Maypop survives our winters here. They keep going right up until hard frost. It's probably a size issue. You just need to keep going until one gets well established. (perhaps a heating mulch (film) during the first year) I can send rooted cuttings/plants next year. Will try to start a couple in the next week or so, but it is the wrong time of the year. In June, july, I have to pull up many semi-invasive shoots that root easily and grow well. Seedlings can be fussy. I don't transplant them out (only done it a few times) until they are a foot or so tall/long. I used to trade them off to people.

Our growing season here is about a month too short for them to fully ripen. I used to try to eat them, but don't get enough juice from them and dislike the hard seed issues when trying to juice. Very pretty though and love to watch thee bees circling on the flowers. They are apparently somewhat sedating, as the bees have a tendency to fall asleep on the flowers.

Passiflora edulis is the edible passion fruit and does not do well here in my garden. However most people grow Passiflora caerulea which does seem to grow well on a south or south west facing fence/wall. We have no trouble with them at all. The frost can knock them back. But our springs are early and we get daffodils in February. The passion flowers shown are mine and keep flowering till the first cold nights We have Robins here that are not like your ones as they are small and have a redbreast, so I leave the yellow fruit on to fall, as the Robins will peck at them for the seeds.
Kiwi fruit also grows well here, and the evergreen clematis or Clematis armandii, which is said to be tender.
Regards.
Neil.

I don't want to loose this information, so I split it off with it's own thread.

Twit, I would love to try a rooted cutting next year. Maybe if I get it going early enough to really send a good root system out, it will survive for me. They truly are lovely vines.
Which passiflora is yours?

Lynn, I had a passiflora "Incense" that I was so convinced was done for that I planted something else in the pot. Next thing I knew, I was seeing little shoots coming up that are definitely passiflora. So maybe you gave up too soon?

No, I actually had it in the border along the creek, clearly marked. When it didn't show up about mid summer I carefully dug up the area, there was nothing alive. : (

I have seen them on garden tours around here and a friend here in my town grows them no problem. She gave me some starts and I killed them. I think Twitcher is right; once established you're good to go with them it just may take a few tries.

Connie, I think I had the same experience as you did. I actually got one to start growing in the border, it gave a couple of blooms before the growing season ended, went dormant and never came back the next year. I think it was not established enough to survive that first winter.

Maybe the area was too soggy? I had one when we lived in SoCal and that darn thing was impossible to kill and tried to take over the whole corner of the house!

I don't think soggy was the problem. I was in an area that did not become soggy, along a wall with good draining soil.

Hey, maybe they just don't like you? I've had plants like that........

I'm thinking I just may have got it into the ground to late in the growing season. Not enough time to establish.

You might also try loosening the soil to a goodly depth to encourage the roots to go deep? Along with getting it started earlier? That reminds me, I have one lone Incarnata seedling it a small pot that I need to drag in before it gets cold. No way they'll survive the winters here!

Good idea woofie. I will give that a try and see if I can conquer growing this plant.

Dear woofie, I put the cuttings in deep pots and sink them into the soil! This is because I don't want too many of them! I have one in the back garden and one in the front so people are always stopping to admire them and want one.
The good thing about gardeners the world over is their kindness to share both knowledge and plants. As passion vines are easy to grow here I simply give them away to people who ask for one, well rooted in a deep pot, and most have no trouble with them in this area! I have a small walled garden which keeps warm and a wooden fenced garden as well, but they grow in both and it does get down to -20 F here.
Once they and the evergreen Clematis with its heavenly spring and autumn scent get established, I mulch them well. This keeps the frost out, as we can get frost till late April. Hence why our Asparagus season is the last two weeks in May and the first two weeks in June.
Regards.
Neil.

Neil, I may try that idea when I have large enough plants to take cuttings from them! They're still quite small and didn't grow much this year. Of course, in addition to cold winters, I also have to deal with a great deal of snow and very soggy ground. sigh. Which is why most of my gardening is done in either raised beds or pots. How deep a pot do you use?