I've been growing kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) for about 40 years on the south wall of our house in NW Burnaby for about 40 years. Ever since the single female plant started to flower, I've had some fruit production from this vine, but never an abundance. Because the vine is trained right up against the house wall, and kiwi vines are extremely vigorous, in the past I've removed most of the new canes each year, leaving only a reasonable number of canes with typically 3 - 6 nodes (leaf buds). However, last year I read the following publication: https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/pnw507.pdf and noticed the following. "The most productive part of long 1-year-old canes is from nodes 6 to 40. The buds at the base of canes usually produce only a vegetative shoot (no flowers)." This means that I was cutting off practically all of the productive parts of the canes. So, last year I adjusted my pruning to leave much longer canes. The result: this year I harvested over 100 lbs of kiwifruit from this one vine, which shares space with a male vine and has most of its roots under brick pavers. A vine in a more favourable location should do even better. For anyone growing kiwifruit, both fuzzy and hardy types, I recommend the above publicaton for information on how to get the best out of your vines.
I had a male hardy kiwi that died suddenly in the spring a few years ago, for unknown reasons. I planted another hardy kiwi, the self-fertile Issai variety, in the same spot; and it seems to be doing fine.
