I recently purchased property that has mature male/female kiwi fruit on it. I bought it last fall and they were fruit on the female plant. Excited to see the production of fruit this spring...the female bloomed out beautiful and the male still doesn't have any flowers on it. So as a result, the female didn't set any fruit...they all fell off. Does any one know if the female will continue to flower to let the male eventually polinate when it finally flowers????? Thanks
Yes, in future years, the female will continue to flower. Perhaps the male needs to age a little more yet.
Thank you for your response....I think the male is as old as the female. The female is absolutely beautiful...probably 12' high and 30' around. The bases of the female is around 8-10" diameter. My feelings are that maybe another species of male to flower closer the female should have been chosen. I don't anything about kiwi's except what I have read via the internet. I know it will produce fruit because there was fruit on it last year and I was really hoping the female would continue flowering this season. Right now it's still shedding all of the first blooms and the male still hasn't shown any sign of flowering. But I don't even know what a male flower looks like. thanks again. Lamar Deese
I have a male and a female producing fruit. here is a pic of the female and male flowers. Female looks like the male but has a white center. Took many years befor they started flowering. I had to hand pollinate. Seems the bees are not doing their job. This is my second year with fruit. YUM!
Thank you for your reply....but I'm still confused. I know both plants have bloomed in the past( I wasn't actually there because we moved to the property in the fall. So the plants had already done their deeds and the female had lots of small fruit on it) This year the female flowered beautifully but no flowers on the male that i seen. Do you think the there are years that the one or the other doesn't flower for some reason causing the female not to get pollinated and I guess the the female only flowers once a year I'm assuming. I guess I'll have to wait till next year and see what happens then?? thanks again. Lamar Deese
Lemar, The female will not flower again til next season. Do you know how old the plants are? If the Male is indeed a male and it produces flowers or had in the past It is good to Prune after bloom to restrict male plant size and maintains good annual flowering canes. So if it is an older plant and has not been pruned then maybe that is the reason for no flowers or it may be a female. Female flowers are viable and receptive to male pollen up until 9 days after opening. Male flowers have viable pollen for only 3 days after opening. So at first sight of the male flower I had to hand pollinate the female flowers right away. I did this, this year because last year I let the bees do it any only got about 10 kiwi fruit. This year I hand pollinated and I have over a hundred kiwi fruit on the vines. I am going to to attach a pdf file on Growing Kiwi that may help you. The information I found on the viable pollen I got from the California Kiwi Commission at http://www.kiwifruit.org/KiwiGrowthBasics-i-47-35.html I hope I help a little. Shari.
Thank you for the web site....good info. Are the flowering canes that you speak of, the shoots of new growth out of the main vine? Thanks, Lamar
yes, were you able to open the attached PDF file for growing Kiwi. Lots of good info there on pruning.