Lots of kiwi threads. I picked this one.
From reading that a single male kiwi vine can pollinate up to 9 or so females, here is my question.
If you are space limited…in this case a raised deck arbor 17 feet by 9 feet, can you grow, say, 2 female vines and one male but prune the male vine aggressively?
My thought would be if one male can pollinate 9 female vines, then a heavily pruned one can pollinate 2 female vines.
Trying to maximize the area available for fruiting wood.
Shibumi, what you are suggesting is almost exactly what I did with my kiwi vines 40 years ago. My space was even more limited, basicallly just enough space at the southeast corner of the house for a single vine. I planted a female close to the corner and a male 6 ft west and built a trellis against the south face of the house. The trellis has horizontal stringers spaced about 18" apart, starting about 5 ft up. I’ve trained the female cordons on the first, second, fourth, fifth, and seventh stringers, and the male cordons on the third and sixth stringers. I probably could have allocated only a single level to the male, but this has worked quite well, with close to 100% pollination every year.
The male canes growing from the the cordons are kept closely pruned and are mostly removed as soon as pollination is complete.
That sounds great. I figured this was a doable option for the space limited folks. I’ve read quite a few posts here and there about male vines being aggressive growers and taking over and wondered why they weren’t just checked back hard.
Thanks… Now some planning… Oh and picking a suitable variety or two.