thanks for responding. now i know.
I actually stopped by this guy’s place as he lives close by - very nice man. I bought a bunch of kiwis and rotted them down for seeds, no cold stratification yet. If anyone is interested let me know - I just ask you cover the cost of postage. I also have 4 kiwis in a bowl outside my house rotting through the winter, trying this super lazy method to sow the seeds early spring.
How do people feel about the bareroot kiwis from Isons? They do fine? Everywhere else seems to sell potted.
Few years back I bought six fuzzy kiwi from Isons. They were nice size, but they all died. After that I only bought potted (without issue). Maybe just my bad luck, but I’m only buying potted fuzzy kiwi. Hardy are a bit more vigorous and may do better bare root.
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@Incarnata Do you hand pollinate your kiwis? I read that even on commercial farms they often hand pollinate kiwis to get them to grow large. The flowers lack nectar so the bees don’t visit the female flowers much, resulting in smaller fruit.
Would it be possible for me to grow fuzzy kiwi in southeastern MA zone 6b? I would get the varieties Saanichton, Jenny, and a male vine to pollinate them.
I have space along a wood fence that runs north/south. I would paint the bark white and wrap the trunk, but in my area would late freezes be a problem? I wouldn’t want the vines to get killed back to the ground every spring and not be able to set flowers and fruit.
I also would hand pollinate the vines because I read that the flowers have no nectar and so bees don’t visit the female vines much, so hand pollination is necessary to get large fruit.
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I’m surprised by the comment about bees not visiting fuzzy kiwi flowers. Around here (PNW), I get nearly 100% pollination; but the pollinators seem to be mostly bumblebees. I don’t see many honeybees or mason bees on the blossoms.
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The deer will love kiwi vines on a fence.
I think it would be worth a try at least. I’ve found them quite hardy for 7A. I haven’t noticed a huge difference between varieties in hardiness, the main thing is early ripening as most fuzzies want a longer season than you have.
I don’t know where you read about pollination but I’ve never had any problems. My fruits have tons of seeds in all fruits which indicates good pollination.
Late freezes may be a problem some years. But the vines invariably re-sprout from dormant buds all over the plant, not from the ground. So you just lose one year of harvest is all. The bad thing is a really strong late cold snap which can crack open the vines and potentially kill them. This is a problem in the midwest but not as bad for you I would guess.
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I think this winter is going to be a good test of hardiness of a lot of things now what we are going back in the single digits this weekend (for me in 7b outside Philadelphia). Think warm thoughts, everybody!
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I read that the variety Saanichton ripens earlier than Hayward so it’s better for colder climates. I was planning on getting that variety and maybe Jenny as well. But I’m not sure if a New England fall would be too cold for them to ripen.
I read this article that says most commercial growers use artificial pollination because the bees lack of interest in female flowers often result in smaller fruit. Because of this, I was going to hand pollinate the vines to make sure I get full size fruit.
Yes Saanichton is one of the better ones for short seasons. The best one I have found for early ripening is Soreli, it ripens several weeks earlier than Saanichton.
Thats strange they had such bad results in that article. They got only 3% pollination with managed honeybees or bumblebees. This does not align with what I see in my orchard, I get more fruit set than I want - I don’t bother to thin but I should thin given how many fruits there are. Note this article is not about full size or small size fruit it’s about fruit or no fruit.
Most commercial growers don’t hand pollinate according to what I have heard, they just bring in more bees than they would have brought for fruit trees since kiwi pollen is less attractive (that much is well known). I would read the two replies at the bottom of the article you link, these growers believe that the study used too few hives.
For your orchard it will depend on what collection of pollinators you have. If you are going to hand pollinate I would only do it for half of the plants and see if you notice any difference.
I think I’ll get two Saanichton along with a male. The other variety you mentioned is a different species so I probably wouldn’t want to get a second male that I would need for it.
The article does mention that fruit size will be smaller if they don’t get enough pollen grains, but you could be right that the study didn’t use enough bees. I worry that the bees in my yard won’t pollinate the female flowers because of the lack of nectar. There are much more attractive flowers in my yard blooming at the same time so I feel like they would focus on those instead.
I was also thinking of growing the male vine in the front yard because space in the backyard is limited so I’d rather save it for plants that will produce fruit (which I won’t grow in the front because people can see it). If the bees actually do go for the female flowers though then maybe it’d be worth it to plant them close so that I don’t need to hand pollinate.
Do you get full size fruit without hand pollination?
This is first year fruiting for Saanichon, insect pollinated. I thinned fruit hoping to increase size but, even so, fruit are small, about 2/3 size of store bought. The 10’ vine survived a winter low of 5f with no protection. My zone 8 does not have much summer heat but long mild fall allowed fruit to ripen. Picked fruit in December
Saanichon have a larger core than store bought which is a negative. I’m going to graft on a number of yellow varieties I got from @Marta looking for smaller core and sweeter taste.
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I’d just put the male next to the female, I think you will get good pollination. Nobody here hand pollinates their kiwis. (Maybe some people should be doing that but I don’t think anyone is actually doing it.) What you can do with the male is to prune it back to next to nothing. Look up goblet or head pruning for grapes, it’s something like that but with even shorter shoots. If you have say a 12’ trellis you can have 3’ for the male at one end and the rest for females.
Pollination is usually all-or-nothing, either lots of seeds or no fruit at all. I have gotten a few partially pollinated fruits but is not common at all. You will know if you are getting partial pollination because some fruits won’t be perfectly round. Commercial growers need to worry a lot more about this because if they get partial pollination in one year it could put a big dent in their profits. They need great fruits every year to stay in business.
Re: the Soreli, if your season ends up being too short for the Saanichton you could give it a try. You would indeed need a different male as well. The yellow kiwis are supposedly less hardy but I never noticed that.
Those don’t look like the Saanichtons I got, they were longer and thinner than Haywards and yours are stubbier than Hayward. Often young plants produce small fruits so I wouldn’t read too much into the size at this point.
Could I buy a few Soreli scions from you? I can’t find Soreli plants offered for sale. Or maybe you know of a supplier.
I have chinensis male scions from Marta to graft onto my Matua male.
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That’s interesting about the shape of your Saanichon. Mine are definitely round or even slightly square shaped. Maybe climate influences shape. Have you noticed a firm and larger than normal core? From literature it appears that this is a trait of Saanichon.
From LSU (lsuagcenter.com) : “Saanichon are large, somewhat more rectangular than Hayward, sweet, and of good flavor. The inner core of the fruit can be tough.”
There are two distinct types of yellow A. chinensis, diploids and tets. I’m guessing that Marta’s are diploids, but I’m not totally sure about that. The tets are typically later blooming and in many areas will not overlap with the diploids. Where I am in the mid-South, the diploids (Hort16A seedlings) would bloom anywhere from 7-28 days earlier than several tet females, depending on temps. The fuzzy males are even later and may not overlap much with yellow kiwis. This all depends on how compressed or extended the spring weather is. In the PNW, everything seems to bloom closer together and late frost don’t seem to be an issue, so it may not matter there.
The hardiest yellow chinensis I know of are two male Sungold seedlings I selected from a bunch of seedlings. They were fine after -8F, while all others were damaged or killed. That’s probably the limit. I doubt that fully dormant fuzzy kiwi would be much better than that. I have never had fuzzy kiwis survive without serious trunk injury. For anyone pushing the boundaries with fuzzies, you should make sure that the sun never hits the trunk during winter. They are highly sensitive to southwest injury.
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I may have been getting Saanichton mixed up with another variety, it was over ten years ago that I grew them. They definitely were not round balls like the pictures above. The “rectangular” description rings a bell.
PM me if you want some Soreli wood, I don’t sell but I could trade for it.