Passionfruit in South Australia

Kieren from Hillbank in South Australia sent us in some great photos of how to go about setting up a passionfruit vine.

A site which receives part sun and shade was selected

The wire mesh was added for the passionfruit to grow along

Bricks were layed to contain the soil

The passionfruit vine was planted

Kieren selected both the Passionfruit - Granadilla and the Panama Red. My guess is that because passionfruit are fast growers the wire mesh will will be covered with the vine in a few months.

The Butterfly Kiss DVD

Below is a short extract from the DVD The Butterfly Kiss which won the Spirit of Woodford Awards this year. You can purchase the full documentary DVD if you enjoy what you see.

Coffee Plants in Pots

After we discussed growing your own coffee plants where many of you wrote in and gave some great tips I got inspired and are now growing my own coffee plants in pots in my Brisbane backyard. I know they don't like too much wind so they are being sheltered and they are also getting as much sun as I can find for them. I am hoping come July and September this year or next I might be able to make some "real coffee" from scratch. It was said you need 30 coffee plants to have 2 cups of ground coffee every day of the year. Just think how many coffee plants there must be in the world. If this all works out and these plants provide the Utopian cup of coffee then in the next picture there might be 10 times as many coffee plants to photograph. I am growing the Coffee K7 variety and because it is grown in a pot it will be naturally dwarfed however there is a new variety called Dwarf Coffee Plant - Catui.

Passionfruit - Fast Growing

The passionfruit vine below is 1 year old and full of passionfruits. Simply by placing a trellace along the fence so that it can grow along the passionfruit will flourish in hot environments such as Queensland. There would at least be a hundred passionfruit ripening on this vine. I find that the large purple flowers appear for a day or two and then they form the fruit. You do need to be patient with the fruit because after appearing it takes a couple of months before they turn from green to purple. This passionfruit is a Passionfruit - Panama Red.