The Gardens of Chiconia 46: time for a little passion…

… fruit!

The Panama Black passionfruit vine I planted a year and a half ago has come up trumps – finally! These fruit are the size of huge tomatoes, a gorgeous glossy purplish brown. The first year, I watered and fed the vine carefully, trimmed and trained it. Nothing. It gave me lots of shiny green leaves. This year, I decided tough love was in order. It got watered some-times, mulched occasionally, and I allowed it to ramp through the adjacent shrubs. Mostly, I ignored it.

While I wasn’t looking, the sneaky thing has flowered, fruited, flowered some more, and there are at least 20 green fruit dangling there, being totally ignored by the grasshoppers (touch wood), with more flowers open and budding. I get the feeling passionfruit perform much better if you ignore and perhaps even stress them a little.

I don’t really expect much from the other fruit trees. Perhaps a mango or two, by the time the grasshoppers and rosellas have passed that way. Another basket of mandarins to juice and freeze (too many pips to make them fun to eat). The little custard apple tree is flowering, but I don’t believe I have any neighbouring trees to allow it to be pollinated, so I don’t think I’ll have any fruit there either. The avocado made a mighty effort with the flowering, and at one point I thought I’d get a solitary fruit. Nuh uh. Grasshoppers again. And the birds got all the mulberries.  One of these fine days, I’ll feel up to digging a hole big enough to plant the Ducasse banana tree I’ve grown on from a sucker off my original one. And then I’ll stand well back and watch it head skywards! Meanwhile, it’s looking happy and healthy in its tub, so all is well for now.

I must head outside to extend my irrigation system to take in the new water feature and surrounding plants. Being away over a week with the temperatures rising and not that much rain forecast will leave it dry and tragic unless I act.

Hmmm. Now, what shall I do with those passionfruit?