Morning, Hello Sradleye, Wow, your Passionvine is absolutely beautiful. So symmetrical. Trellis size is perfect. May I ask the reason you set it outdoors? Was it the smell of FE? lol If odor was the reason, it should be gone by now. Of course, I'm certain your PV loves it outside. You'd rather not keep outdoors until autumn? Has it flowered the last two-years? My ex-green PV sowed from seed, lived in a west window..year round. It grew tall, up and covered the ceiling. I fertilized a couple times a year..'can't recall which fert I used.' I have a plant book, 'oldie-but-goodie,' by James Underwood Crocket, original host of Victory Gardens. He lived in the eastern states. RIP. Anyway, he advised cutting PV stems back late January I had no idea pruning was necessary. I wanted flowers/fruit so bad, :) So, I believed pruning would halt flowers growth. Mr. Crockett suggested pruning 6-inches from soil line late Jan. I never pruned that much. Then again, my PV never bloomed either. :) He also advised fertilizing 'lightly' every other week. In fall, when growth slows down, stop feeding and give enough water to prevent wilting. He was against pinching, because pinching leaf tips could cost blossoms. Oh, Sradleye..Roses and Morning Glory! I hope they weren't your first house plants. Roses, minis or standards, grown indoors are mite magnets. So, please don't blame yourself. Morning Glory can be grown inside, but they need direct sunshine and a well-ventilated, air circulated room. Otherwise, like other annuals/perennials, they're mite magnets. As far as MG, it depends on variety. I have 'Blue Dawn', which is a perennial MG..Thank God, it's never had mites or any other pests, but during our cold, grey, IL winters, it goes semi-dormant. I really should prune down the entire vine, and start over. Growing annuals/perennials as house plants is difficult. Some plants, eg Coleus, do well, but w/o adequate winter light, they'll get spindly. I've also sowed dwarf Marigolds indoors..they are super-dooper mite magnets. lol. Marigolds are almost, but not as bad as roses, when it comes to mites. Are herbs used to kill mites? Srad..the best way to rid mites is by misting with 2-3 drops of dish soap and water. Two to three times per wk, until mites are gone. I add other products, too. Red pepper, garlic, Listerine mouth wash. Insects despise the scents from each ingredient, AND none are harmful to humans. I mix ingredients the night before I plan on spraying. Unless FE is added, the soap, etc will last for weeks. When FE is included, I toss leftovers within a 24-hour period. What color are scale on your Schefflera/Umbrella Tree? Brown or white? Hard-shelled or cottony? When my Hoyas were mealy infested, I sprayed a ton of rubbing alcohol on leaves, stems, trunks.. A waste of time. Maybe if mealy is caught early, RA might work. Your PV leaves look very healthy and pest-free..no signs of mites. Perhaps you cut back, unhealthy, 'if any' stems and foliage? Did you find webs? Webbing that resembled the fine weave on your roses??? I know ants and mealy work as a team, but I didn't know ants and scale worked together. Of course, scale is a form of mealybug. What do brown specks look like? Do they protrude or embedded in leaves? Can they be scraped off? Oh yes, outdoor sun certainly brightens colors. Plants love natural sunlight, humidity and fresh air. Summer does wonders for our plants. Good luck, although, as far as your PV goes, it's doing fantastic. Hi Will, You don't know how much I want to summer tropicals outdoors, but ants are a huge problem here. They're everywhere! No matter, which side of the house, ants have taken over. Although I despise chemicals, I plan on purchasing ant baits, then, before bringing plants in, each will get watered with vinegar. I did this last autumn. The vinegar didn't harm plants, and very few ants were found. Will, is your mom in z5, too? Some plants are better neglected, lol. Especially for people who can't go a day w/o watering. Do you think repotting is the reason your Steph didn't bloom? I've heard, 'not certain,' repotting can cost blossoms. It's true Clivia won't bloom if repotted in spring, and a few other plants, but not sure about Stephs. I believe repotting before buds are due, halts flowers. Just my opinion though. Will, what do you mean, 'before the sun shelter went up?' Did you set the Steph in hot sun w/o acclimating? If not, didn't the leaves burn??? So, you allow your Steph to go in complete dormancy during winter? Wow. Do stems brittle? How do you know it's alive? :) Don't think I can do that. Last winter I set 3 Adeniums and 2 Pachypodiums in very low light, and infrequent watering. None died, but it took a while before Pachypodiums' leaf grew in. Worse, my Adeniums have few leaves. Usually, by this time of year, Adeniums are fully leafed, and blooms. I did the same w/Pandanus/Screw Pine..it's now in plant heaven. Hope you see the reason I fear forcing plants in total dormancy. :) Thanks guys, for all the help..Toni

Hi Karyn, That is the address I've sent them to and I'm going to try again. They have built more hotels since the summer before last but at least they are nice hotels. All the extra rooms near the Falls are destroying dozens of small operators just down the road. You'd think with 8 million tourists a year there would be enough to go around. I've lived here my whole life and still think it's a beautiful place but the growth of the tacky businesses in the tourist area can get tiresome. Off to e-mail. Tyler.

Eric pointed out one of the most important points when overwintering a plant indoors. DON'T OVERWATER!!! They require far less water while being over wintered. To further confuse you symptoms of overwatering can appear the same as underwatering, limp plants and yellowing foliage. It's safer to under then over water but I do mist the foliage because the lack of humidity promotes pest infestations. Even in a sunny window over the winter I'd use a grow light. You don't get the full light spectrum. For a couple plants you don't need anything fancy, a single bulb will probably do. I use HID and HO fluorescents but I have several hundred plants that I winter over. When I sink a passiflora I keep it in the pot but cover the bottom drainage holes and cut holes in the sides of the pot. This makes it easier to lift in the fall as the roots grow out the sides and I can take a sharp spade and slice most of the roots when I dig it up. As for hybrid hardiness, genetics, etc you are getting above my head. I just grow them because I love them and know more then the average person but am in no way an expert. Eric is. I allow my caeruleas and other cold hardy potted passies to go dormant in the garage or the unheated greenhouse so I don't have experience keeping those going over the winter. With the tender varieties I keep growing over the winter I'm not looking for blooms as much as just keeping them alive. Many are continually cut back due to space issues so it can take longer for blooms on some plants during the growing season. Decalobas are probably my most prolific and earliest bloomers of the plants that get cut back. Their blooms are usually small but they have some of the most interesting foliage of any of the passies.

Although $10-$20 for a Passiflora plant (rooted cutting) might seem like a lot, it really doesn't add up quickly for a small specialty grower. It's useful to do the math and see how many plants one might have to grow and sell to make a reasonable living. Let's say, hypothetically, one can make a profit of $5 on each plant after paying for greenhouse heating, water, fertilizer, soil, pots, pesticides, permits... To make $50,000 a year works out to 10,000 plants a year. Is there even the demand for this many? And let's say they can ship Monday and Tuesday, 50 weeks a year. That works out to 100 shipping days for those 10,000 plants, or 100 plants per day for that person who tries to make a living doing this. Is that even possible? The small growers who make it possible for us to grow all sorts of interesting plants need our support. They are not getting rich selling plants. Karyn, would such a cutting distribution system even be practical? I'm trying to imagine the botanical gardens matching the right cuttings to the person who wants them. Cuttings, of course, need to be dealt with immediately, and I'm not sure one can assume that most people can successfully root them. Around here, the botanical gardens are pretty good about propagating their plants and selling them for cheap. I attached another photo of $15 Passifloras from Strybing below: P. x exoniensis and P. membranacea (I already posted P. antioquiensis above). Perhaps a system where people have more input as to what gets propagated would be useful? Or if one could more easily request a certain plant (or seeds) that seems to never be available? I think that can already be done to some extent here. I guess we are spoiled locally because the botanical gardens (actually their employees and volunteers) do such a good job propagating and selling us plants for cheap. It's overwhelming in many ways. P. x exoniensis and P. membranacea, $15 plants from Strybing: