Hardy Kiwi......Any Experience Growing From Seed?

[Charlie]

I've ordered Hardy Kiwi seed and wonder if anyone has grown them and any recommendations.

Charlie

[Tom J]

It takes on average, 6 years to have fruit from seed. It's late, but if you can still find plants, you can cut that to 4 years. The growers in South Georgia plant close, then take out the weaker plant as they grow.

Tom J

[bungadora]

What kind did you buy? I have a very small Issai, which is apparently the type which can produce fruit by itself after it ages a bit - I was reading up on it recently though and apparently it produces fruit better if there is a 'male' kiwi vine somewhere in close proximity. Since Issai's are all 'female' I was looking at Arctic Beauty, which is the other type which might grow in my area (zone 3 - pushing the envelope a bit). I've also seen seed for Chinese/Siberian types which apparently aren't hybridized, but am waiting to see if ANY of the seed I've bought from the company that had them actually sprout. Dora

[Bill]

I tried hardy Kiwi. One male and two female. In about there years had large vines and many fruits. This from 10 " starters not seed. But the fruit was twice the size of my thumb if lucky, smooth green and did not look or taste like a Kiwi at all. I ripped them out.

YMMV

Bill

[Tom J]

That's what you get with those cold hardy varieties, not the large fuzzy kind that grow further south!! I love them!!

Tom J

[bungadora]

Well, I aspire to getting enough to make a batch of jam, and if they don't taste the same I'll just add more rum. Dora

[bungadora]

Another site for you Charlie,

[Charlie]

Actinidia arguta -- Hardy Kiwi.

Yeah, I saw that about M/F and wonder how the heck you tell a male from a female plant. Starting from seed.....so???

Thanks for the link you posted.

If nothing else, I always like vining plants. :-)

Charlie

[Charlie]

Crud.......should have started *way* sooner on this project!

[Charlie]

But....was the taste pleasant?

Charlie, going thru my Celtic selections this nite, listening to the Best of Brier... presently "Drink Up Thy Cider"

[bungadora]

Oh yes. I have Actinidea arguta Issai which I transplanted. I've been looking at the seed for Actinidia komomikta.

The female plant has a bulbus portion in the middle of the flower from which the fruit develops. The male, apparently not. Dora

[Charlie]

Gotcha.

Soooo......I need to start enough to assume/hope I have both sexes and interplant. Would you go to ground the first year or pot them and overwinter in cold storage? Then go to ground the second year after they were going well. I'm zone 5.

As you might have gathered, I am completely clueless about these.

[bungadora]

I've read comments from people in zone 6 that the claim that hardy kiwi can be grown in zone 4 verges on retail fraud. So on that basis I'd go the cold storage route. Once established they're probably OK. I mulch over winter like a tender rose, but as I said, I'm in zone 3A. Dora

[Jan Flora]

Where are you, Dora?

There are hardy kiwi varieties that grow wild in the woods around Kamchatka, Siberia.

Jan at 59N. in Alaska USDA Zone 3

[bungadora]

I'm in Calgary Alberta Canada

My understanding is that most of the commercially available hardy kiwis originate from the wild kiwis in Siberia and China. I'm not sure how seriously to take 'zone' ratings on various plants to tell the truth. I've come across native plants sold commercially which originate from this area and are rated zone 4, or 6, In recommending that Charlie baby his plants for the first couple of years, I'm on the side of caution.

Dora

[Charlie]

I've enough seed to experiment with this. I'll try both, just for the fun and education.

I agree that the zone ratings are pretty general, and are subject to seasonal variations as well. I've been of the understanding that your seed/plant source should approximate the zone in which you will plant it, as climate is built into subsequent generations. Not really sure about that.

Who knows, climate change has likely re-written the zones.

Charlie

[bungadora]

Well, one of Calgary's challenges is the high altitude, which makes the nights very cool. We only really have one month of the year where the temperature might reliably (knock on wood) be above 15C at night. Makes it hard to grow tomatoes. We fewer growing days than other areas farther north, and at lower altitude because of that, but we're in the same zone. Dora

[Jan Flora]

[...]

Ah. Nice country! Tell Ian Tyson I said hello, if you see him at The Stampede : )

Raintree Nursery sells hardy kiwi. They are pretty proud of their stock, but at least they have it. They're in Oregon or Washington.

I take zone ratings as advisory. Lots of seedsmen are too cautious with their ratings, IMO.

I'm a sink or swim gardener. I'll mulch something and baby it a little, while it gets it's feet in the ground, but after that, it needs to acclimate and survive my conditions without a whole lot of bother. I'm busy. (We run beef cattle and put up a couple of hundred acres of hay every summer.)

If you enjoy fermented barley juice (beer), the price of hops is going to soar, so you may want to plant a few vines of your favorite type of beer, so you can homebrew in the coming years. I'm going for "Cascade" hops, as I prefer cheap American lagers. (Guiness tastes like an oatmeal cookie in a glass, to my plebian palate.)

As long as we have a Canadian on the line, I'll repeat something that I was asked in a tavern in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada a few years ago. He said, "Why can't a country that can put a man on the moon brew a decent beer?" Indeed.

Jan in Alaska

[Jan Flora]

Lagunitas? Get out!

Try Alaska Amber when you get a chance. It's not bad. Their seasonals are occasionally brilliant and sometimes even sublime.

We have a little homegrown brewery -- Homer Brewing. Great beer and we get the spent malted barley to feed to our beef cows. The cows think it's ice cream. We throw the occasional handful of the wet barley into bread dough, when we're baking, and it makes a yummy loaf of bread.

I think what the Canadian rancher I was talking to was referring to was the fact that tappers in most American bars (working men's taverns) have Budweiser on tap. Talk about swill! And in every Canadian tavern I've been in, they have Molsen Golden on tap. For a cheap lager, a pint of Molsen Golden is hard to beat.

Is it spring in the Napa/Sonoma Valley? It's spring here. I'm still wearing snowshoes to walk anywhere we haven't plowed around the yard, but I'm wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sunscreen while snowshoeing : ) This is the best time of year -- warm weather, no mosquitos, no tourists and the king salmon are biting in the bay. (Go look at

see the feeder king that Norm Anderson caught the other day. It's a dandy, even by our standards. Feeder kings have pink flesh that cooks to white. It's a genuine food of the Gods.)

Jan

Jan

[bungadora]

Yeah. The first time I met Americans I was working in a bar 'up north' during summer vacation. They always used to get ripped on Canadian beer. I guess the alcohol content was quite a bit higher. I don't know whether it still is.

Now you have me thinking about hops. Are there hop farms? I'm completely ignorant of this.

Dora