North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]



For those of you who are actually growing passionfruit vines on purpose instead of having to fight them from taking over the garden, I have some suggestions.  I'll bet that vines pulled up from the root will root better in hot weather than in the cool of fall.  I have found that if I want to bring in pepper plants, I'd best pot them up in August because in late Sept or early Oct they will go into a decline rather than deal with the disturbance to their roots.  I expect that persimmons and pawpaws will be similar in reactions, and one Pomona article on pawpaws bore this out, saying that the transplant survival rate was much higher in high summer than in fall or winter. 

    The other thing about passionfruit vines that might make them a bit more worthwhile to you is the value of the vine itself if cut near the end of the season and dried for tea.  I was surprised to have a client who was surprised to find I didn't know about the joys of passionflower tea.  She said, "Why, my mouth is watering right now just at the thought of it!"  So I had to try some in the next few weeks, and it does taste quite good.  Then there was the pharm tech guy who told me about making peach wine and I asked what he was using for astringency, as peach wine won't taste good without something added, 3 teabags per gallon in our case.  He said he'd dried passionflower leaves and added them, and then commented that it was a MAO inhibiter.  That sure gave me some food for thought.  Donna