Passionfruit Not Producing Fruit in Desert

Q. I have a 3 year old passion fruit tree in my garden which started bearing fruit that grew fine and was mature enough to eat in February. In spring I also had more flowers blooming on the same plant, but these flowers never had any fruit. The same thing again in this past summer, but the flowers are not fully developing and are stopping at just little buds.

Giant passionfruit with flowers growing in the Philippines.Giant passionfruit withstands even less cold than passionfruit and is more tropical.

A. Passionfruit is a semi tropical vine that can’t handle freezing temperatures very well. It also likes moderate temperatures so it will have difficulties during the hot summer months. It grows very nicely in the tropics and moderate temperatures of high elevations in Africa.

Intercropping passionfruit, strawberries and kale in Kenya.

            Unless you have a warm microclimate in your landscape, these plants will show serious damage or die from winter freezing temperatures. If you can grow oranges in your yard, you should be okay growing passion fruit vine. Passionfruit may have difficulty setting fruit during the summer months because of high temperatures and low humidity.

Flower of giant passionfruit

            Passionfruit definitely does not like soils with poor drainage. If this is the case, and you don’t do anything about it, the vine will always have problems and probably die. Make sure the soil is amended with compost at the time of planting and cover the area around the vine to a distance of about 3 feet with woodchips so that a decomposes into the soil.

Giant passionfruit trellised above fish nursery in Philippines

            Passionfruit flowers are beautiful but they need help sometimes to produce fruit or to produce larger fruit. You may need to hand pollinate the flowers, transferring the pollen from one flower to the next, a job normally done by a variety of different bees.

            You may need to grow 2 different vines and transfer the pollen from the flower of one vine to the flower of another vine. This helps prevent what’s called “self incompatibility” and failure of fruit to develop. Passionfruit germinates easily from fresh seed and does well on its own roots. Passionfruit propagated by cuttings has “self incompatibility” between flowers and will not set fruit.

            Also, prune the vine by removing side shoots after fruit is removed. This helps the new growth growing from the older wood of the vine where flowers are produced and keeps the vine renewed for more production.

            Besides trellising this vine and pruning it back occasionally after fruiting, apply wood chip mulch at its base to preserve soil moisture and keep the fruit from being dropped if the soil gets to dry. Fertilize the plant lightly after it flowers by applying a “tomato fertilizer” to the soil around the plant and water it in.