I fertilize mine a lot with a general balanced fertilizer, especially spring and early summer.

The garden center here told me that if I fertilized, the plants would grows lots of leaves, but no flowers. Any truth to that???

I've heard some plants--tomatoes, fruiting things--will put out only leaves with high nitrogen fertilzers. P. incarnata will grow much more slowly with smaller leaves if you over fertilize (don't ask how I know that).

But none doesn't make any sense to me.

A lot of passiflora are adapted to poor soil conditions, so they don't normally need much additional fertilizer. Where I live, the soil is alkalai black clay, so in addition to the light nitrogen fertilizing I give the whole yard every year, I also make sure to distribute iron and garden sulphur. Lots of plants struggle to get enough iron in alkalai soils, so that helps everything. And the sulphur counters a little of the alkalai, at least in the topsoil (and helps my wife's roses). You've got to know your land, and what it needs.

But yeah, I've heard and read that about nitrogen spurring vigorous green growth at the expense of flowers. Haven't seen that happen myself, tho.

HI All
I was trying to figure out why my wooden tower is covered with thick growth but comparatively few flowers. It seemed that there there a lot more buds just a month ago.

I suspect that I hit it with too much fertilizer when I was watering my brugmansia with 20-20-20.

It's also possible that since the crape myrtles came into full bloom, the tower is getting less sun. Or, that the fact that there are a number of Foetida's returning this year, and they are crowded and blocking each other's light.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. In the mean time, that 6ft 6 inch tower is covered with green and some buds.

thank you
cynthia

Hi All
General fertilizer is usually not the best for Passiflora as too much nitrogen will indeed give too much leaf growth. It is extra potassium they need but some Passiflora as Jblaschke says are adapted to very poor soils. P. incarnata for example does not want or need fertilizer whereas others like P. x belotii need high potassium to do well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Passiflora fertilizer

I don't fertilize my passies often but I do dig in a small amount of chopped banana peels every 4-6 weeks during the growing season. I don't remember who told me to do that to provide extra potassium but my plants seem to like it and they bloom well.
Karyn