When to cut back Passionfruit Vine?

[InsanityShard]

I was training my passionfruit vine along the fence, but it started climbing my bottlebrush. I though "Yeah, no problem, just a natural tralice" but the part at the bottom bears no fruit, it's just a thick trunk like stalk along the fence, and where the fruit comes is at the top of a 4 or 5 meter tall Bottlebrush, which it covers half the canopy of, and on top of that it's on a hill so no ladders possible. I've been thinking of cutting the vine back to 2 meters, so I can retrain is along the fence, but I'm not sure if that's what I should do (Can't pull it down, there's no way) and what time I should do it if I can. Right now, for example, it's not fruiting (It fruited for months! The cockatoos wouldn't leave it alone and it all all out of reach) but the drought is pretty bad and the heat/lack of water might be getting to it. Watering every day isn't enough for some of these plants with this heat, we even put shadecloth over some plants just to try and save them. It's also had a weird effect on the bottlebrush. We've been here 3 years but only now it's having seed pods. It's also been growing a new branch out towards the house from under the pasionfruit, which seems to have reached full size. I wish I could post pics but I can't get my camera to connect to the computer. I've never even fertalised it.

 

[anon_lp]

Hi InsanityShard
I have just cut mine back as I had to move it. You can cut it back hard from end winter till end of spring and it will come back no problem with a vengeance. I also gave mine some extra compost in the planting hole and a weak feed once covered. Hope this helps?

 

[InsanityShard]

Alright, thanks, I'll try that.