Ricky, So sorry to see all the concrete and plastic involved in this BBQ event. Hope there was enough tasty meat to make it worth it. There seemed to be enough denim clad buns to keep the event interesting though. Excellent pictures of the canal and the small ships traversing it. I too wonder how larger commercial traffic gets through. Thanks for the pics!

I see this is an old thread! I'm in East/Central Oakland. I planted two Frederick plants in late spring of this year. One I got from Berkeley Horticulture in a gallon pot. It was their last one and looked terrible. The leaves were torn and the vine was sparse. They gave me a discount and said it would improve. The other I got at Oakland Ace Hardware on Grand. It was a 5 gal pot and looked great. The 1 gal pot I planted in some terrible looking dirt next to a chain link fence because it was the only pre-made support and full sun I had at the time. The 5 gal I planted in rich soil along a wooden fence on which I had created a trellis. Initially the 1 gal. did nothing. Any new leaves looked deformed and the plant barely grew. Th 5 gal. took right away and flowered shortly after planting. Within the first couple months a fruit appeared. Then nothing. I used fish emulsion on both. It was not until I dug up around the 1 gal, added some planting mix and bit of gypsum to the soil, and then added plant food, that it took off. Within a couple weeks it had grown by at least 30%. Then it started flowering. After helping it with sexy time (I helped pollinate the flowers), the small plant now has 3 fruits growing and several flowers. The 5 gal has produced many flowers, but other than the first fruit, all have fallen off. I don't know why it hasn't self-pollinated. This week I started helping the big plant to pollinate, so hopefully that does the trick. But the vine itself has also grown at least 30% if not more in the 3 months it's been up. Sorry for the long narrative! I just was out there working in my garden today and so it's all in my head.

tumblingtomatoes, I think P. edulis is your best bet overall. If you want to start it from seed you want it fresh, and the fresher the better. The best way to do this, if possible, would be to buy fresh fruit. I really don't know, but perhaps a Latin market would be the best in your part of the country if not available where you normally shop? Germination will still probably take 2-4 weeks, I think. Purple passionfruit (P. edulis f. edulis) vs. P. edulis flavicarpa (yellow) may be an option where you are--P. edulis f. edulis is hardier. Red ones tend to have both in their background and most if not all are hardier than flavicarpa, I think. Hopefully someone who knows about this plant can tell you about P. edulis flavicarpa in Florida. Fruit from seeds will be variable in quality, that from named varieties should be of more uniform quality. Some people sell seeds that came from a particular variety--I have no idea whether this increases the chances of good fruit. I strongly agree with the recommendation of Grassy Knoll. If you speak (or write) to Elizabeth, she can also recommend other species/hybrids besides P. edulis. That would be a very useful thing to do--she sells more passiflora than anyone in the country and she is very nice and extremely helpful. The only problem with Grassy Knoll is that they don't ship this time of the year. If you are interested in free P. edulis seedlings from store-bought fruit I can send you a couple. It's unlikely but I might have something better--I'm wating to hear from someone else. I do know that there is someone in Florida who has offered cuttings of P. edulis in the past, but I don't want to speak for him or post his info--again email me. So those are a couple possibilities, but you can't go wrong with Grassy Knoll. But if you want to do it by seed (which will take a couple years) make sure you get the freshest, by whatever means. Hopefully someone here can recommend a company. The general rule about fruit is only eat it when it falls off the vine. The vines and immature fruit tend to be poisonous. Check out Myle's Irvine's (passionflow's) site: http://www.passionflow.co.uk/passion-flower-passiflora-toxicity.htm

Update on my advice above to actually visit the country(ies) you are thinking of moving to, and our friends' advice that establishing foreign bank accounts BEFORE moving was something they should have done to avoid six months' worth of delays: The IRS is cracking down hard on ALL foreign investments, whether real estate, investment accounts, checking/savings. The penalties are huge, and although you can try to wrangle them down, it is a fact that taxpayers with smaller balance accounts are proportionately paying LARGER penalty fees than multi-millionaires who are deliberately hiding assets. The WSJournal had an article on this issue June 2014, but as it's subscriber only, I'll just post some excerpts: Expatriate Americans Break Up With Uncle Sam to Escape Tax Rules Record Numbers Living Abroad Renounce U.S. Citizenship over IRS Reporting Requirements WSJournal June 2014 U.S. offices abroad reported that 1,001 U.S. citizens and green-card holders had renounced their allegiance in the first three months of the year, according to Andrew Mitchel, a lawyer in Centerbrook, Conn., who analyzes Treasury Department data. That figure puts 2014 on track to top last year's total of 2,999 renunciations, he said, which was the most since the government began disclosing the data. Helping boost the exodus, experts say, is a five-year-old U.S. campaign to hunt for undeclared accounts held by Americans abroad….The tax dragnet has also swept up many middle-income Americans living abroad, prompting some to give up their U.S. citizenship. While people who renounce are NOT freed of taxes due for past years, they don't want to risk sizable taxes and penalties for them and their children in the years ahead, experts say. Nearly 8,000 taxpayers have renounced U.S. citizenship in the past five years, Mr. Mitchel found, compared with fewer than 5,000 in the preceding decade. ….U.S. officials launched their campaign after Swiss banking giant UBS AG admitted in 2009 that it helped wealthy American taxpayers hide money overseas. To avoid criminal charges, the bank paid $780 million to the U.S. and turned over information on more than 4,400 accounts, ending decades of Swiss bank secrecy. In May, Credit Suisse Group pleaded guilty to similar charges and agreed to pay $2.6 billion. Dozens of other Swiss banks are currently negotiating penalties with the U.S. Department of Justice, officials said. Following the UBS revelations, U.S. officials announced they would begin vigorously enforcing both new and long-dormant tax rules. Unlike other developed nations, the U.S. government taxes citizens on income they earn anywhere in the world. … The most common mistakes usually involved Americans failing to submit a form called the Foreign Bank Account Report, or Fbar. Since 1970, U.S. taxpayers have been required to file if they held one or more foreign accounts totaling more than $10,000 over the course of a year. Until the enforcement push, many Americans never filed an Fbar. The law is more than 40 years old, but "no one ever heard of it" before the crackdown, said Edward Kleinbard, a former chief of staff on Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation, and an expert in international tax law at the University of Southern California. Fbar penalties are as steep as 50% of the highest value of the account for each year no report was filed. The IRS fined one taxpayer for Fbar violations in four separate years, and a settlement reached this month in the case yielded $1.7 million in penalties, which was more than the account held at the time. …The typical taxpayer with less than $45,000 in undeclared accounts paid nearly six times the back taxes owed, while the typical taxpayer with more than $7 million in such accounts paid closer to three times their back taxes, Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, an IRS ombudsman, found. … Scrutiny of Americans abroad will intensify, however, under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, which Congress passed in 2010. The law's main provisions, which take effect in July, will require foreign financial institutions to report income of their U.S. customers to the IRS, much as U.S. banks and brokers file 1099 forms. Middle-class Americans "face overwhelming problems when they try to engage in standard financial practices, such as having a small business, saving for retirement, investing, buying life insurance, and making wills and trusts," because of the laws governing assets abroad, said David Kuenzi, a financial planner with Thun Financial Advisors in Madison, Wis., who works with expatriates. The U.S. tax code, for example, doesn't recognize Australia's version of an individual retirement account, Mr. Kuenzi said. American taxpayers with these accounts must file at least two forms a year declaring the account a "foreign trust," and paying taxes on annual appreciation. The penalty for failing to file can be as much as 35% of both contributions and withdrawals each year, plus 5% of the assets, said Mr. Hodgen, the Pasadena tax lawyer. *********** Hope this info is of use to others.