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Passion Flowers
Last year, we bought three passionflowers:
1. Passiflora alata 2. P. racemosa 3. P. incarnata 'Incense' to grow in pots in the conservatory. Somewhat to our surprise, starting from 3" they all went off like rockets and put on 12 ft plus by early October. Two flowered prolifically as well! Alata just grew lots of very large leaves. All three have kept their leaves, although incarnata's have turned yellow since christmas. Suggestions please for how we treat them as they come into growth again this spring. Pruning? Fertiliser? Thank you. -- Larry Stoter |
#2
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Passion Flowers
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#3
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Passion Flowers
Chris Hogg wrote:
snips ... I have P. alata, P. molissima, P. vitifolia, P. 'quadrangularis' as it is popularly called (most probably P. x decaisneana) and P. antioquiensis growing in an older-style SW facing conservatory that I keep at about 10C in the winter months with a small fan heater. It needs heavy shading in the summer otherwise it gets much too hot, and the P. antioquiensis shrivels in direct sunshine. Both it and P. molissima are high-altitude species, and don't like it too hot. It inhibits the flowering of the latter until the cooler autumn and winter months (it's been sporadically flowering all winter). P. antioquiensis hasn't flowered yet. I used to have P. x Incense but space is limited and I prefer the larger and brighter flowered species! I grow them in large planters and troughs, as they like plenty of root space. I use John Innes Ericaceous compost, with about 25% extra grit or grit-sand added to improve drainage. They need to be kept well watered, especially in the summer, usually twice a week, but check the soil moisture before you do it. I feed every three weeks or so with ericaceous fertiliser at the recommended strength. With the exception of P. antioquiensis, I've had then all about four years. They flowered well in the first two years, but since then flowers have got fewer and leaves smaller. I shall re-pot them this spring, and probably cut them back fairly hard. They don't seem to mind, provided you leave two or three feet of stem for re-growth. The roots will also get trimmed. My P. molissima suffers badly from red spider mite and it had thrips last year. But the big-leaved P. alata and P. quadrangularis haven't suffered from either yet; perhaps the leaves are too tough. I treat both with natural predators, as RSM in particular is resistant to most insecticides, and once you've introduced the RSM predator you can't use insecticides for any other bugs as you'll kill the predator. If you want a good book on passifloras, I recommend 'Passion Flowers' by John Vanderplank, the MIT press. Thank you - useful information. -- Larry Stoter |
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