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Out of Control Passion Fruit Vine! Help!

Christine Walthall

8 years ago

I have a passion fruit vine that is growing out of control along a long, tall chain link fence. It is flowering and fruiting in the warm months, but beneath the layer of green is a whole lot of dead wood, making it billow out farther than desired.

What should I do to gain control of the vine, and get rid of the unsightly wood beneath it? The options I’ve considered are:

Manually hacking away at the old wood underneath, which is incredibly labor intensive and hard to untangle the old from the new vines
Chopping it all down and hoping it will grow back more nicely
Chopping it all down and veering the whole fence with a different vine that is less billowy, like creeping fig. I worry I would have to remove the entire fence though to get rid of the passion fruit.

Any suggestions or tips?

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Comments (2)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
8 years ago
Passion flower tolerates - even benefits from - an annual hard pruning in late winter or early spring before new growth really gets going. I would cut it back hard, ignoring the fact that some of it still retains foliage. It will grow back rapidly.

I'm not sure I'd replace with creeping fig as that really needs a more substantial flat surface to grow on and anchor its peds or hold fasts. But many other vines could be substituted - bougainvillea, wisteria, lavender trumpet vine, clematis, honeysuckle and jasmine are all good for your hot climate - although almost ANY vine will benefit from routine (annual) pruning to clean up dead wood and foliage and to control size.
eloise_ca
8 years ago
Your vine looks exactly like mine did last year. I had let it grow because my neighbor loved the flowers, scent, butterflies and bumblebees on it. Finally I decided to just cut it all off to ground-level. It was a lot of work, and took a couple of weeks to dispose of all the cuttings but I did it. My neighbor has let it grow on his side of the fence, but I keep trimming once I see it starts climbing on my plants. If you want to keep the vine, gardengal is correct in that you can cut it way down, and it will sprout again.
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