Passiflora help please

canadianplant · Post by **canadianplant** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:39 pm

Well, dispite having heavy snow, and supposed -10 temps a night or 2, my passiflora is alive. Ive buried the bottom half 2 feet deep , mabey a foot wide in leaves, then wrapped in plastic ( not sealed yet). No real leaves on eh bottom, but the tops are all green still. Im not sure if i should give it a try and leave it, or if i should try to cover them in some way. Im not as familiar with these as with other plants.......

Thanks everyone

TerdalFarm · Post by **TerdalFarm** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 6:45 pm

I'd like to learn more, too, and so hope we get some input.
Last year I tried to overwinter P. caerulea with mulch; it was up by the house. Didn't work.
This year I grew P. coccinea. I dug the roots and lower stems last week after the freeze and brought it inside. Not confident it will survive.
Now, if I was at all smart, I'd just grow my native P. incarnata....

canadianplant · Post by **canadianplant** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:43 am

LOL, its sort of hard to find incarnata up here, whih is hardy to zone 5 or 6 before any multch. I dont even know what species mine is ( was jut labeled blue and white sp.), but it has the teltale "pot leaves" of the cerulea. Heres some pics of it...... Usualy all passiflora ( except incarnata) are generaly very frost sensitive. I think paul mentioned getting a cerulea to survive where he is.

As or temps, im not exactly sure what they are in that area. The lowest temp this year recorded at the airpot was -9C, but my thromometer in my yard hasnt recorded anything below =2C in the last few weeks. LIke i said i multched the crap out of the bottom half, and left the top half of the vines exposed 9 ive already tried to grow the passiflora from cuttings, which failed.

i almost bought some coccinea seeds. The red flowers are different from most passiflora and its apperantly hardy to zone 7.... let us know how it goes dude.

TerdalFarm · Post by **TerdalFarm** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:46 am

Jesse,
that is a much better mulch pile than what I used last year for my P. caerulea. Hopefully your better efforts will pay off.

This year, the new (planted April) P. coccinea saw -3 oC before I dug it. The leaves that were right up against the wall survived.
The foliage grew great and covered a large trellis. However, my complaint was that it did not bloom at all until October (photo below) and had dozens of buds about to open when I got that freeze. If the freeze had held off, like happened last year, it would have been spectacular in November.

<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GJ ... site"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_r-MvN4jW1sE/TLzRC ... AG0288.jpg" height="800" width="478" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/terdalfarm/ ... e">October 2010</a></td></tr></table>

canadianplant · Post by **canadianplant** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:41 am

Wow dude.... thats very nice.

Personaly, im not too into flowers.... but these really add a crazy tropical vibe to the garden, even incarnata. Ive finally found out a few things about caerulea:

They apperantly can take from -8c to about -23C. This depends on how dry they stay. Ive found many sources stating that P cearulea grows best in crumbled brick

My friend is sending me fresh incarnata seeds. And as a failsafe, im also ordering some. They have the best chance of survivng here. They used to grow up to Ohio i belive, and my climate is close to theirs ( a bit colder normaly, but in my time it is quite similar).

The ground was a bit wet when i buried it. And its a warm corner. Mabey i shuld take the plastic off for now to let it breath. The temps arent too cold yet to do any damage.