Does anyone on here have experience with Akebia/Chocolate Vine? If so, do you think it will fruit in Zone 5 where I live? I hear it can be difficult to get it to bear fruit outside of its native zones…it is also not self-fertile, so you need 2 plants, and it sounds like you may need to hand pollinate. And it probably would need to be in full sun.
Anyone know much about this? Any tips or tricks?
Here in zone 6 kansas i have not been impressed but i wanted to be. Search results for 'Akebia' - Growing Fruit
I was very interested in akebia a while back. I’ve read up on impressions from this forum, other forums and weirdfruitexplorer on YouTube. Everyone seems to say the same thing, it’s very cool/alien looking but the taste is bland. But yes, from what I’ve read online it should easily fruit in zone 5.
I think I remember it is sensitive to late cold snaps, which is common here. I put in several types for cross-pollination for a customers privacy screen. Came up each spring only to get slammed by a late frost and look ragged, changed to a different plant after several years. Also zone 6…
I have one, but not another so it’s never been pollinated to set fruit. The vine so far has been well behaved and twines through a tall ‘Queen Elizabeth’ rose I have. It blooms it’s little chocolatey-purple flowers every year and they are cute, but despite nurseries typically advertising them for their chocolate scent I find the scent too mild to be noteworthy.
How tall does your ‘Queen Elizabeth ’ get in your climate? I had it at my grandmother’s house in early 70’s, got about 6’ tall each year, which was pretty tall for the midwest plains. I’ve heard it gets higher in a milder area.
The absolute tallest point on my ‘Queen Elizabeth’ rose is about 10.5’. I like tall roses cause I don’t have to worry about deer eating off the flower buds.
Unfortunately, I’ve found it to be only fairly disease resistant rather than highly disease resistant as many claim. It doesn’t get bad enough black spot to fully defoliate, but does get enough to be noticeable (prior to me twining a vine through it which adds leafy fullness). The thing that actually disappoints me though is that the edges of the flower petals often turn brown before the flowers are even fully open. It still looks attractive overall from a distance, but not so gorgeous up close. 
If you’re interested in tall roses, I’ve really been loving ‘Margaret Merril’. It’s a very fragrant white rose with a slight pink blush. I haven’t grown it as long as ‘Queen Elizabeth’, but it only ever gets negligeable amounts of black spot, flowers generally don’t brown until they’re aging and it is VERY upright. Mine has gotten progressively taller each year (with zero support) and is currently standing at about 8’ tall. It looks like it’s not ready to stop adding height either. I especially love that it stays rather narrow too (at least so far).
Kind of over more roses, I grew over several hundred especially older ones, in the last half-century. The northeastern USA mites the government spread to kill multiflora (and it’s descendants), and then rose rosette pretty much ruined it for me. 
I had some hybrid perpetuals that did 10’!
If you think the problems are bad wait till you see the solutions.
Might be different up north, but in zone 7 Virginia Akebia is so aggressive it can choke out Kudzu. Fortunately it never seems to set fruit, otherwise we’d have an epidemic of it. The technically edible fruit doesn’t sound worth it IMO.
I agree that its one of those aggressive vines. I plan on removing mine
I had 3 akebia vines, 2 of which fruited this year. I gave them to a friend because the fruit was not worth the space they took up. The fruit pulp is okay (tastes like a cross between tapioca and coconut), but it accounts for only 3% of the mass inside the pod. The other 97% of material is seeds that are bitter on the inside and must be spat out. Please note, I’m not counting the rind of the pod when I give these values. The fruit to seed ratio is truly 3:97.
does anyone know of any varietals? apparently there are some in japan that dont split when ripe 