HI, I'm wondering if you've ever eaten the fruit or made juice or tea from your passion flower fruit? I've often heard of it being used like that and wondering what your experience has been. Thx, Xtal

I've never been successful at rooting maypops, Sue, but I have been successful at growing them from seeds. I've got two P. incarnata 'alba' (white flowering form) seedlings in my rooting cage right now that I'll be planting out pretty soon. The seeds are odd. I plant mine fresh with the natural stuff surrounding the actual seed intact - I can't remember what that stuff is, but it's the sour stuff that you can make juice from if you have the patience to squeeze it out. A lot of people say take it off and soak the seeds in orange juice, but why? The natural juice is acidic. Some will come up right away, and others won't come up until next year, but the germination rate is always low for me. Still, it only takes a few to wind up with a whole field of it - you saw for yourself how it spreads from underground roots. There's probably some way you could start them from the underground root itself - maybe somebody else will know. Sherry

@Shad Burns I'm curious, where did you buy your seeds or vines from? I grow them too, and I'm always curious about the source of passiflora incarnata, when grown successfully in zone 5/6. Mine were selected from the wild, in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. I'm always interested in hardier strains. @Helene Albert I am in zone 5b, Chicago suburbs, literally a stone throws away from you. I grow passiflora incarnata successfully. I have fruit that's ready to harvest at end of August continuing through to October. It's truly a may sprouting perennial for me. If anyone is growing passiflora incarnata in zone 4/5/6a, please send me a message through Houzz by clicking my profile. I cannot send messages by default to most people, because messages are not enabled by default in Houzz until you go to your profile and enable them under "advanced settings." You should be able to send to me, however. I collect hardy passiflora incarnata. There is some genetic variation. Even the white version of P. incarnata aren't the same, with at least 5+ different strains floating around.

Well, it partially depends on what species of Passiflora it is, but for the most part Passiflora can be heavily trimmed, but not all the way to the ground. I agree with kayjones above that you should wait until you see new growth. I had an 11 year old P. caerulea that I had to cut back very hard due to it being strangled in a chain link fence, (yes, the branches are that big), and it actually did better the next year than it had in several previous. I think the most important thing is to make sure you do it at the right time of year, when new growth is beginning to break through. Don't wait till it gets too hot, and don't do it when there is still chance of freeze. There's my $.02... Eric