Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: azubah on May 20, 2014, 14:27
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Has anyone here grown kiwi? Did you get any fruit?
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We've had a kiwi plant against our kitchen wall for the last 6 years or so. Every year it gets dug up by one of the dogs or broken off by a child or some disaster or other. Every winter it dies back but manages to survive (and it can get to 20 below here!). This year it finally seems to be thriving and is stretching up the entire wall towards the kids' bedrooms.
But we've still never seen a single flower, let alone any fruit. :( If anyone knows when they're supposed to flower, I might know what I'm looking for :tongue2:
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Thanks for your interest, jerynl. From your experience, it seems that they can grow quite large.
I read somewhere that they can take 5 years to start to produce fruit, so perhaps you will see some flowers next year.
Unfortunately you need at least 2 to get fruit as the plants are either male or female.
http://www.fruitexpert.co.uk/KiwiFruitBushes.html
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Mine is only 4" high and in its second year.
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Has anyone grown the hardy cocktail kiwi/kiwiberry? Actinidia arguta is the Latin name I think and I've seen the self-fertile variety 'Issai' for sale in the UK. Tried the fruit for the first time this year and they are just amazing, so sweet and very moreish! Wondered how many years it would take to fruit here seeing as they are well suited to our climate.
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If possible check or find out what variety of kiwi it is, they tend to be male+female and you need something like 1 male to 5 females for good pollination.
A few years back a self fertile variety came out, just cannot recall the name, so another variety may be needed.
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In theory our plant is self-fertile, but having not ever seen a flower yet, I can't verify that :-)
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I have two Kiwi 'Jenny' they are both self fertile and have flower buds on them this year. This is the second year of planting, they were 2 years old when I bought them last year. I also have 2 kiwi Issai these are the frost hardy mini kiwis, they are only just getting going but as of yet no sign of flowers yet.
(http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj86/TheNutcracker1985/kiwiflower.jpg) (http://s270.photobucket.com/user/TheNutcracker1985/media/kiwiflower.jpg.html)
This is the flowers on one of the Jennies from last year.
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They look like male flowers to me.
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They look like male flowers to me.
I have absolutely no idea what sex the flowers are only that my vines have flowered:) The vine is 'Jenny' which self fertile so assume that it produces both male and female flowers?
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The yellow bits look as if they are stamens. There may be female flowers on there somewhere, or maybe the female bit is in every flower but not visible in the picture.