Overgrown Passion Fruit Vine, Help?

[chorvat]

I have a passion fruit vine that is growing out of control along a long, tall chain link fence. It is flowering and fruiting in the warm months, but beneath the layer of green is a whole lot of dead wood, making it billow out farther than desired.

What should I do to gain control of the vine, and get rid of the unsightly wood beneath it? The options I’ve considered are:

• 1. Manually hacking away at the old wood underneath, which is incredibly labor intensive and hard to untangle the old from the new vines
  2. Chopping it all down and hoping it will grow back more nicely
  3. Chopping it all down and veering the whole fence with a different vine that is less billowy, like creeping fig. I worry I would have to remove the entire fence though to get rid of the passion fruit.

Any advice would be appreciated!

[tomc]

Pick a section on one end. cut the entire vine off ankle high. I expect it will bud back. Even if it don't. The dead wood will be easier to remove after a year or two.

[imafan26]

Passion vines are like that. They grow wild here and will climb fences and go over trees. If you cut them back they will come back.