Over 20 years ago we planted Kiwi trees and they have not produced any fruit. So my questions are: 1. How do you tell from Male and Female (after they have bloomed)? 2. What would cause them not to produce if we do infact have male and female? Thank you
The female flower looks like the fruit is already forming when the bloom opens. There is a green bulb in the centre which eventually forms the fruit. The male bloom does not have that. Here is a picture of my Issai hardy kiwi bloom which is female. If the plants are blooming but not producing fruit my first guess might be they are the same sex. Spring frost would kill the blooms and prevent fruit but I doubt you have that issue in Long Beach lol! The only other thing I could think of is that you might have 2 different species possibly?? A Deliciosa and a Chenensis variety that would be incompatible maybe??
also I thought males have different looking leaves all the pictures I've seen appear that way. If you searched google or yahoo images for male/ female kiwi that should help. i thought male have more decrotive leaves colorful. IS that correct. I never seen females look likke this with the color red on the leaves. I could be wrong. http://www.hort.wisc.edu/mastergardener/Features/fruits/kiwi/kiwi.htm I was thinking of these today because Sombody asked On free cycle for fruit trees. Does anybody know where I could get some cuttings or rooted cuttings
The colourful leaves are only on the male 'Arctic Kiwi' variety which is the hardiest variety of kiwi. Arguta varieties and Delisiosa varieties the males leaves are the same as the female. Only the flower differentiates the two. As for cuttings you can request them from the USDA at Corvalis.
Thank you It sounds lke you mean for free I think that is unlikly. Would you tell me more about it. I probaly will start another topic about this, but I read somthing on the page got me to thinking about climate/ fruit size since I know Russia is cold. Here is a quote. cultivars include Krupnopladnaya (which means "large fruit" in Russian. If you know Do you know of any other cultivars that are less cold hardy but have bigger fruit since this plant is cold hardy to zone 3 and has small fruit do they have a cultivar inbetween (medium fruit cold hardy to zone 5 or even 4) I'd ike to know more about it becuase I like native plants, and would love wild seeds (and Im interested in crossbreeding/hybridization) I just don't where to look on the site.
i SEEN THIS iN A ARTICAL could this be the problem Prune annually. Remove 70% of the wood--all the spent, misplaced, and tangled wood--leaving approximately 30% percent, composed of the previous year's new growth. When plants are young, be sure you have one trunk, two cordons, and last year's pencil-sized new lateral growth (fruit spurs - close nodules). Removing more than about 70% will throw the plant out of balance and it will become vegetative the following year: you need last year's fruit spurs present. [adapted from a post by David Jackson & Holly Laubach, Kiwi Korners.] A quote from here http://growingtaste.com/fruit/kiwis.shtml
