Preparing A Passion Flower Vine For Winter

With the popularity of owning a Passiflora vine, it's no wonder that the common name for them is a passion vine. These semi-tropical beauties are grown all over the world and are cherished for their marvelous flowers and tasty fruit. If you live in USDA planting zone 7 for most passion vine plants and zone 6 (or a mild zone 5) for purple passion vine plants, you should be able to successfully overwinter your passionflower vine outside.

Growing a Passion Vine Outside Year Round

The first step that you need to take is to make sure that where you are growing a passion vine outside is somewhere that the vine will be happy year-round. For most climates, you will want to make sure that the Passiflora vine is planted in a somewhat sheltered area.

For cooler climates, plant your passion flower vine near a foundation on a building, near a large rock, or concrete surface. These types of features tend to absorb and radiate heat as well as help keep your Passiflora vine remaining a little warmer than it otherwise would be. The part of the plant that is above ground will still die back, but the root structure will survive.

In warmer climates, the root structure will most likely survive regardless, but a sheltered area out of the wind will ensure that more of the upper part of the passion vine plants will survive. 

Preparing a Passion Flower Vine for Winter

As winter approaches, you will want to cut back on fertilizer you may be giving to the plant. This will discourage any new growth as the warm weather comes to an end.

You will also want to heavily mulch the area around the Passiflora vine. The colder the area you live in, the more you will want to mulch the area.

Pruning Passion Vine Plants

Winter is an excellent time to prune your passion flower vine. A Passiflora vine does not need to be pruned to be healthy, but you may wish to train or shape it. In cooler climates the whole vine will die back, but in warmer climates this will be the time to do any pruning you think needs to be done.