The Passionfruit Field

The afternoon after we arrived, Aunt Zena took us (that is, myself and Patsy) to see her passionfruit plantation. It was great to meet Jinky (hope I spelled that right!) who is a Voluntary Service Oversees volunteer from the Phillipines. Jinky spent six months at Adel's building up the passionfruit plantation form scratch -- that meant clearing the land, putting up the trellisses along which they would grow, supervising the care and the weeking of the plants, and so on. It takes seven months for a plant to grow and bear fruit, so Jinky just made it to her first harvest. We were all excited by the big fat fruit growing along the vines, and spent a couple hours walking up and down picking up the fallen ones! Passionefruit fall to the ground when they are ripe for the plucking, so it was easy to know which ones we could carry home -- the main problem being that we had nowhere to put them! So Jinky went back to Adel's and came back with several plastic bags -- all of which went back filled to bursting.
After that there was passionfruit juice, passionfruit jam, passionfruit everything for a few days.
Aunt Zena wants to go into passionfruit production commercially, so it will be intersting to see how this develops.
Here's a video of the visit to the passionfruit field:


And if you'd like to grow passionfruit at home yourself, here are some instructions: http://www.homelife.com.au/gardening/projects/how+to+grow+passionfruit,5389