maypop shoots for sale or trade

We have some wonderful maypop (passiflora incarnata) vines growing on our property. Fruit quality in this species can be variable; ours taste, to my palate, delicious—mango x banana with a pop of pineapple acidity. Seedy, of course, like all maypops, but with a good quantity of pulp. The fruits are good-sized and abundant, but the key quality is the flavor, which is better than other seedlings I have tasted.

I am collecting all the suckers that pop up where I don't want them. These are growing vigorously and if you stick them in a little soil they should establish readily. You may see some bug damage on the leaves; ants munch on them a bit first thing in the spring, but it does not slow the plants down. Images of the mature vines and the shoots (which will be trimmed down for shipping) below.

I would like to get $10 plus shipping for a bundle of five shoots, or trades for other propagation material. As far as trades, I'm especially looking to obtain goumi and seaberry, currants, bush cherries, sunchokes, edible daylilies, and tree collards or other perennial greens.

Post any questions here and PM me to order. I have been growing these for a couple of years and am happy to provide advice. Payment via PayPal; shipping to the US only at the moment.

I have tried to get them established by seed a couple of times and failed. What type of growing conditions do they like, sun, shade, moist and so on?

They can be a little finicky to get started, especially from seed. Rooting suckers seems to be much more reliable—I get very high success rates with no special care, just sticking them in some soil. Even so, I would recommend letting these grow on in a pot with a bit of shelter for a few weeks before you set them out to let the roots build up strength. Then watering them for the remainder of the first summer like you would any first-year fruit tree.

After that, you don't need to provide anything special. The parent specimens of these suckers popped up wild in my lawn on the partially shaded west side of my garage. I have never weeded, fertilized, mulched, watered, or anything. I just give them something to climb, as they seem to fruit poorly if they just trail along the ground.

I am in zone 6b on a limestone-clay soil in a very humid, warm area. However, Lee Reich's book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden describes them similarly as being quite carefree, and he writes from upstate New York. If you are in zone 5, you will probably want to make sure that they have full sun and as much warmth as you can give them to ripen fruit in your shorter growing season (they ripen in late September / early October here) but otherwise they should not require any special care.

Are they perennial in this climate? (I'm also in the 6b MO Ozarks, but a ways from you, I think)
And how do you use the fruits?
Did they flower a lot?

Yes, they are perennial here for sure. I'm pretty confident they are hardy and perennial up to zone 5; maybe even colder, though in zone 4 I would be surprised if you got any fruit.

I don't do anything with the fruits but eat them fresh. You could pulp them and use them like passionfruit pulp / juice, but I haven't yet bothered because I find them so delicious as fresh fruit. We keep about 8-10 vines and since they store pretty well on the countertop (for probably a month) our family of five doesn't have a problem eating them all when they are in season.

They aren't a flower-packed plant like clematis or other cultivated ornamentals, but each vine will have maybe half a dozen blooms on it at any one time from mid-July until September in our climate. You might get 12-15 fruit off each plant, or more if you really baby it, and there will be a number more flowers that don't set fruit. It's definitely still a wild species, but gorgeous for all that.

Awesome! How would you pack them, to ship?

If you have ever ordered sweet potato slips, they ship like that: I'll trim them down to about 12 inches, then put a bit of damp peat and/or newspaper at the root end, wrap it all up in a plastic bag, then surround with more paper and pack in a small box.

My wife has been an Etsy seller for a long time and shipped things as delicate as handmade pottery, so I'm lucky to have an in-house packing and fulfillment department!

Depending on where folks are located, they may need to go out via priority mail to make the transit quick enough. I sent some to a friend in Virginia last week and the shipping went well. The cost was around $7.