Compleatly out of my area of interest till now. Does anyone have experience growing Hardy Kiwi from cuttings. The little grape sized fuzzless ones? barb
They start easily from hardwood cuttings taken in the fall and stuck in a pot of sand with rooting hormone. The first ones that I grew came from tiny cuttings purloined from UBCBG. That was before they became readily available at garden centres. They also readily tip layer.
I don't really know anything about growing Kiwis, but it would seem fairly similar to grape vine cuttings. When I first moved over here to Göteborg in 2006, that first fall of 2006 I was passing by an appartment building and an Immigrant had planted a Kiwi vine against the south wall of the building (seriously I couldn't imagine a Swede doing it) This vine was massive and grew clear up to the second story. It was loaded with Kiwis. I went back by this area this past Fall and looked for the vine but it was gone. Mostly I was impressed that sucha large vine as that grew at all in Sweden. Good luck on your propagation. They should grow perfect for your milder region.
We (crabby old me, grown daughter and hubby) have decided to move back to the old family farm on Lopez Island. It will take a year or so of planning, but that's the goal. The property is 24+ acres, with a big pond, an orchard of about 70 fruit trees and a big garden area all watered from the pond. Sounds ideal but after being a rental for 10 yrs it's pretty much a mess. The kids will start going out and cleaning stuff up. Then over the next few yrs. we want to revitalize the orchard and get the garden going again. The current renters borrowed 2 goats to clean up the brush and black berry. Well - they also cleaned up the raspberry, Tayberry and most of the strawberry rubarb. They and the deer also cleaned up all the fallen apples, pears and what ever in the orchard. Years ago Dad planted the normal large, fuzzy Kiwis. One male and 2 or 3 females. He built this wonderfull thirty foot square tower over the male figuring the pollen would be easily dispersed. I ended up with a tower coverd in male Kiwi that flowered beautifully and all the females died. This winter the tower collapsed in a wind storm and I don't see any signs of the male Kiwi - yet. I would like to plant hardy Kiwi and not have to worry about polination and such. I know Kiwi in general will grow on Lopez because a neighbor started a Kiwi farm and has been pretty successful.
I suspect that the original female hardy kiwi that I pinched from UBCBG was Ananasnaja (AKA Anna) because I planted a purchased Anna years later, and it turned out to have fruit identical to that of my original plant. The point is that Anna requires a male plant for pollination, and Barbara mentioned that she didn't want to worry about pollination. The only self-fertile hardy kiwi that I'm aware of is Issai, which I have in my garden. Issai has a completely different taste from either Anna or commercial kiwis. Its only drawback, for me, is that it is too fertile, producing too many small fruits. Regarding care of kiwis, all varieties require intensive pruning and training; they are not maintenance-free vines.
Thanks for that info Vitog. I will probably rethink the whole Kiwi idea. Regards from another plant pincher. ;))
I have a male and female plant outside that I planted last year. They seem to be doing ok. I'm planning on taking some cuttings and rooting them in about a month or so once they start to take off abit. I've had trouble rooting any sort of vines in the past but hopefully this time it might work. I've had about a 20% success rate rooting grape vines in the past.
