This post is about How to Harvest Maypop Passiflora Incarnata. Here we show you when and how to harvest these fruits that are native to the eastern United States.
How to Harvest Maypop Passiflora Incarnata
The Basics
Maypop Passiflora incarnata is an attractive vine that flowers in the early summer and then produces two-inch-long fruit that is shaped like a chicken egg and is ready to pick in the fall. It is a hardy perennial that survives down to -20F and is hardy in USDA zones 5-9 and is native to the Eastern United States. The vines freeze down to the ground each winter. Maypop gets its name by popping out of the ground in May.
A Little Behind
My maypop plants are a little behind and will not all get fully ripe because it is so late in the year. The reason my maypop is behind is because I was steadily cutting them back to the ground through the end of June. The maypop is growing in a blueberry and blackberry patch and I wanted to let those fruit full ripen in full sun before I let the maypops takeover. After July forth, I let them go.
Beautiful Flowers
The maypop has beautiful flowers. They are extremely fragrant and bumble bees just love them. You’ll sometimes see three bumblebees on one flower.
How to Harvest Maypop Passiflora Incarnata
Quite Aggressive
The one issue I do have with maypop is they can be a little aggressive with their suckering. I planted one plant three years ago near my garden area. The first year it did just fine. The second year it suckered a good bit. I just pulled the suckers out of the ground and tossed them into my compost bin. Well they rooted in my compost bin which is next to my blackberry patch. Now they are coming up all over the place in my blackberry patch.
Awesome Fruit
The fruit has a tropical fruit flavor and makes a wonderful juice. The fruit is similar to pomegranate in that it is a flesh wrapped around a seed. Make sure you don’t pick them too soon though. They are sour, kind of like a lemon if you pick them before they are fully ripe.
How to Harvest Maypop Passiflora Incarnata
Ripe Fruit
The ripe fruit is a little yellow on the bottom and starting to shrivel up. If you open the seed pod, the fruit around the seeds are a yellow color when ripe. If they are white in color, they are going to be sour.
The Harvest
In order to harvest the fruit, simply pull them off of the vine. Don’t worry about harming the vine because the vine is going to die back to the ground, as it does every fall.
Crack it Open
To get at the fruit around the seeds, just pull the seed pod open. It is a soft pod around the seeds and is easy to just pull apart with your fingers. Then just pull the fruit out and enjoy.
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The Video
Check out the video below titeled Harvesting Maypop Passiflora Incarnata.
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Great information thamk you. Have loads of these popping up on the bank next to my barn. Jist found out what this flower is and what the weird fruit is. Always looking for wild edible plants…seem.to have way too many and was looking to see if it is edible. Question: other sites say wait till it drops to the ground (I cut these back so much they are barely off the ground) to harvest and only once they are purple or red and shrivelled…so what do you think?
You may have a different variety than we do in which case this may not apply to you. Ours are the sweetest when they shrivel up, turn yellow, and fall to the ground. You can pick them from the vine, but again, wait till they are shriveled and yellow or they will be sour instead of sweet. You may also want to look into making tea from the leaves. That can be done with the variety I have, just make sure your variety is good for that.
I’ve been growing these for years in North Carolina. Best to leave them on the vine until they start turning yellowish, or better, when they fall to the ground–then they’re ripe. And they’ll ripen further on your kitchen counter. They are sweetest when the skin turns yellow and shriveles. I just ate a very wrinkly one–oh-so-tropical and tasty! Not as tangy as the tropical (purple) passionfruits, but delish for sure.
You should really warn people about how aggressive they are. They will send underground runners for 30 ft or more, 20+ inches underground! I love the plant, fruit, and flowers so I plan to move mine to a big pot or two, and grow it on top of my asphalt driveway so it can’t invade and suffocate the flowers in my pollinator garden!
Excellent advice on finding ripe fruit! Yes, when I sell these plants at market I warn everyone about the aggressiveness of this plant.