Even though passion fruit is a tropical native, you can totally grow it right in your own backyard! While you could always pick up a pre-grown plant at the nursery, there’s something incredibly rewarding about starting your own from scratch. Here is my guide on how to successfully grow passion fruit at home.
How do you grow passion fruit in a cooler climate?
Passion fruit plants aren’t exactly fans of freezing winters, so your best bet is to plant them in a pot. This makes it super easy to move them to a cozy, protected spot when the temperature drops. To get your plant from seed to harvest, you’ll want to focus on these three phases:
- Prepping the seeds correctly
- Encouraging germination and steady growth
- Helping out with pollination
Getting your passion fruit seeds ready
You have two options here: you can buy seeds from your favorite garden center (just make sure it’s an edible variety if you’re looking to snack on them later!), or you can harvest seeds directly from a store-bought fruit. Both standard passion fruit and its cousin, the maracuja, work great.
First things first: give those seeds a soak in warm water. This helps you clean off any leftover pulp. You definitely don’t want to plant them with the fruit still attached, as that’s a one-way ticket to mold town. Start your seeds indoors around March in a small pot. Since they are “dark germinators,” make sure they are completely covered with a thin layer of soil.
Boosting growth and keeping your plant happy
To get those seeds to pop, you’ll need to keep things warm—at least 68°F (20°C). Keep the soil consistently moist, but make sure there’s good airflow so you don’t run into mold issues. You should see the first little sprouts poking through in about three weeks. Once the danger of frost has passed (usually by mid-May), you can transplant your baby passion fruit into a larger pot and move it outside. During the summer, a little liquid fertilizer every two weeks will keep it growing strong.
Helping with pollination
If you want to harvest ripe fruit by the fall, those gorgeous flowers need to be pollinated. If the local bees aren’t doing the job, you can step in with a small paintbrush and do it yourself! The best part? You don’t even need a second plant to get fruit. Once you harvest your own passion fruit, you can use those seeds to start the whole process over again—just remember to clean off that pulp first!
