Passion fruit

I've been growing a passion fruit vine on the side of our house for about a year and it's done a good job of shading most of the wall, but a poor job of producing delicious fruit for us. That's because it's the yellow variety (common here in Senegal), which is not self-fertile, so you need two genetically different plants to swap pollen. Easy enough if you have a source of seed.

Taken at the beginning of rainy season

 

There are other options. You can grow the purple variety which is preferred in most of the world due to less acidity and better flavor. Purple flowers will self-pollinate. Or you can graft purple onto yellow to take advantage of yellow's disease/pest resistance. 

I'm trying all three. I have a purple vine which just flowered last month and has nine large fruit maturing. 

 

 I am rooting out about 30 cuttings from the yellow vine onto which I will graft purple and see how that goes. I also got the yellow vine to accept purple pollen and make a fruit (which the internet seems to think is not possible) and I'll plant out the resulting hybrid seeds to see what comes of it.

Ask me about my mango seedlings next time.

(A)