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 vines 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 four; we're five/six 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 have four or five plants here that are along this wall; there is one male
it takes... it takes the place of that. They can be probably 5 to 6 feet apart, but we certainly
want to have them within maybe 20 to 30 feet. It could probably 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 Logees, one of them is 'Actinidia Issai,' which is
a very good producer for us, in that it will actually fruit without a male
flowering nearby. So, the general
'Actinidia Arguta' cultivars need to have both a male and female. One of the
issues that we find with 'Actinidia Arguta' or the hardy Kiwi, is that takes a
long time for them to come into flower; it can be 8, 9 even 10 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 the male
flower nearby; that will help cross-pollinate it.
So, here we have the fruit, the 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,
it's gotten pretty heavy. This one has a Pollinator nearby, so without that, there 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 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 is a spur growth, right here, that the fruit forms on. And they also produce
these long, sucker leads, that come out here, and it's-- 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 areas. So, what we do is... during
the summertime, we will 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 diseases that bothers 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 adaptable for them to... 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.