How to grow Hardy Kiwi

Hi, my name is Byron Martin, here at Logee's Greenhouses, and today we're going to be talking about kiwis, in particular, the hardy kiwi. Now, kiwis are native mines to Asia, and the one we know, Actinidia chinensis, for this large fruit, is not hardy this far north. It's probably a zone 7 plant, and can take some freezing, but not as much as we get here in New England. However, there are some cultivars of, and species of, kiwis that can grow much farther north, even into zone 4. We're at 5'6", right here, so they actually can go farther north than this. And, in planting these, you need one male plant for six or seven females. Generally, we plant them pretty close together. This is, we got four or five plants, here, that are along this wall. There's one male that takes, it takes the place of that. It can be, probably, five, six feet apart, but you'd certainly want to have them within, maybe, 20 or 30 feet. It probably could be even farther, but the closer, the better you keep the male to the female plants. There are a couple of varieties that we grow, here, at Logee's. One of them is Actinidia sy, which is a very good producer for us, in that, it will actually fruit without a male flowering nearby. So, the general Actinidae or Agouta cultivars need to have both a male and a female. One of the issues that we find with Actinidia Agouta, or the hardy kiwi, is that it takes a long time for them to come into flower. It can be eight, nine, even ten years before they actually will start flowering. So, that's a long-term project. However, this particular cultivar, and another one we have called Actinidia silver lining, it's a variegated form of that, will flower for, and fruit for us, the first year, or maybe the second year. However, fruit production gets very heavy once you start getting a male flower nearby. That will help cross-pollinate it. So, here we have the fruit. Fruit comes out along the stems. Here's a cluster of them, right here. These will be ripening for us in the fall, probably in September. They're sort of like little grapes that form along the stem. Here's another cluster of them, down here. You can see the fruit has gotten pretty heavy. It hides underneath the foliage, but you can see the fruit here has gotten pretty heavy. This one has a pollen nearby, so without that, it would be probably half as many fruit on the plant. And, in growing these, they're climbing vines, so you need to have something that you can let them climb up against. This is up against a wall, here. It's actually got a trellis in the back that it can cling to. Generally, they're pruned sort of like grapes. They actually will produce a spur growth. Here's a spur growth, right here, that the fruit forms on. And, they also produce these long sucker leads that come out here. And, believe me, it's a pretty aggressive plant. So, periodically, if you're growing it in an enclosed area, here, you're going to need to prune these back a bit, or they can actually take over some growing area. So, what we do is, during the summertime, is we'll cut off some of this long vining leads, making sure that we leave some of these shorter stems that are growing in here, for next year's fruit. There's not too many insects or disease that bother them, and that's a good thing. They really don't have to be sprayed. They can grow in pretty much most soils. I probably would think that maybe a really heavy, wet soil might not be good for them. But, generally, most soils are pretty, pretty adaptable, too. And, we don't really feed these very much. Too much feed on them, once they get their roots out, will actually create a much more rank vine. So, they're pretty much self-sufficient, in terms of that. That's a little bit on how to grow Actinidia. And, they're really delicious. They get quite sweet, as the season goes on, and they ripen. Probably used more like a grape.