My home grown golden dragon and Hongyang are significantly smaller than grocery store fruit.
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Alas:
I’m sorry, but we can’t supply cuttings/ propagules to home growers at this time. The policy of our Office of Technology Transfer limits cuttings or propagules to Extension/ Universities (Plant Evaluation Materials Transfer Research Agreement) or to companies seeking a license. There are currently no companies that have secured a license for our cold hardy kiwis. My advice is to either contact your state(s) extension services to inquire whether they are conducting trials or to continue looking through websites of horticultural companies that serve your area.
Best regards,
Timothy
Plant PhysiologistAppalachian Fruit Research Station
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Thank you. I was just about to send off an email as well.
Even though I am in Michigan, I have a very unique set of microclimates at my disposal and am already growing a couple kinds of actinidia plants.
In reference to other replies in this thread, i would have been so disappointed had I grown Jenny and gotten fruit smaller than my actinidia aguta varieties.
I had yellow fruited seedlings a few years back in pots, but neglected them once too often. I should have just planted them in the ground and would have had I known they were hardier than the green fruited fuzzies.
Yeah, that’s what they all do. I live near the kearneysville one and they were quick to tell me no scions.
So where/how are people getting hardier golden kiwi in the states these days?
Just answering based off of everything I’ve read- they aren’t. They are grafting from people who have them.
We had been talking about starting golden kiwi from seeds over in the Northern Mid-Atlantic regional chat and I thought I’d move here to follow up. These seeds were taken out of a store bought golden kiwi (Zespri brand) 10 days ago, rinsed off and put into lightly moist paper towel in a zip lock. The first few days they were on top of my fridge, but after hearing they need light to sprout I just left the zip lock out on a coffee table in the family room. As of this morning it looks like about 50% are germinating. Maybe more will start over the next few days.
I guess I’ll put them in some starter cells and see if I can keep them alive until Spring. Anyone know how long the golden ones are usually available in stores and also if they come from different countries at different times? These are from New Zealand, but I’ve heard of them coming from Italy as well I believe and I’d be interested in starting seeds from different places since they might be different varieties or possibly different pollen sources.
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Wow that’s cool- no cold stratification?
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No cold stratification, but I expect the fruit was refrigerated for a while if it was grown in New Zealand. So I don’t know if they would generally need stratification, but was guessing if they did they might have had enough cold while being refrigerated.
But keeping them in the fridge until late Feb or early March would probably make life easier than trying to keep these alive until spring.
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If you are able to keep them alive over the winter you will have a good jump start. Think I’m going to wait till spring and try your method of just germinating them immediately. That seems to have worked well for you. The good thing about these is even the subpar ones will still be great tasting and the wait time is not long.
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Please keep us updated.
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Starting to pop up. The first one to clear the soil is a helmet head. Do people get a lot of these from kiwis and do the usually pop off on their own or do the often require some intervention like peppers do?
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Well, funs over for now. I had 3 seedlings up (all helmut heads) and I saw others starting to push up. But apparently there is a mouse in my basement where my lights are and it dug everything up last night. All gone!
I may try again later this year, but first I need to get rid of the mouse. I had them once a few years ago and they were a real pain when I was trying to get all my spring tomatoes and other seedlings going. Unfortunately the mice I have here are really tough to get - all the dumb ones have been caught and the ones still in our neighborhood seem very adept at avoiding traps, etc.
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How frustrating, I’m sorry!
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