Has anyone been to Virginia Golden Kiwi in Vienna?! I just learned about them. They did u pick on their golden kiwis but sold out the first weekend.
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Interesting, we live 15 minutes away and have never heard of it.
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I’m close as well. It looks like they update social media the most and had picking the second weekend of October. I’ve got it in my calendar for 26!
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Couldn’t get their website to work. I’ve never heard of them either. Do you know if they sell plants as well? Being that it’s in Vienna I’m guessing it’s someone’s back yard.
Their website works if you click on a specific link to go to it from a search engine as opposed to the general page. But, there’s not a lot to learn from it, and it hasn’t been updated since last October. No contact info on the contact us page. Their social media page is more up to date and shows pictures and a few videos. It’s certainly not your average suburban backyard as they have a very large and long trellis shown in one video and pictures, and a herd of goats in another. It looks like they grow them from seed and are breeding based on another video of seedlings at various stages. It also looks like they’re open for visiting during the season, but that has ended now. I’ll post an update if I see more about visiting them next summer.
Cool that’s interesting they are growing them from seed. Maybe they will get some good varieties. It makes sense they would do that since there is no reliable source for named varieties.
5 acre lot and it looks like trellis down at least 2 sides. I’m curious what their total production might be from seedlings and if they are at the point that they are cloning any of their better performers.
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@scottfsmith I don’t really have room for them unless I take out my beloved muscadines, but I’m curious if you find you can grow the fuzzies without sprays or if they require spraying.
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This is Virginia Golden Kiwi instagram site.
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They don’t require any work at all, just prune them once a year. I think they are the most under-appreciated fruit to grow in the Mid-Atlantic region.
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Scott is right, they are super easy and really do not take all that much space. I did fuzzy and tons of hardy and regret not going only fuzzy. Extremely hard to keep the hardy in check and the fruit are not as good as the fuzzy IMO.
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I’m sold! Totally going to try growing some and see what happens.
I love the golden ones. I didn’t see any plants for sale but maybe I’ll try starting some seeds and see what I get…
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Tried growing some gold’s from seed last spring myself. Didn’t get any to grow, but I’m going to give it another try next spring. Scott grew a bunch from seed and I think he wound up with all or mostly males. Sadly you have to wait till they flower to figure that out, but I guess they can be grafted to females.
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It was 5-0 males to females. I have some more I am growing out, these are crosses with hardy kiwis someone asked me to do. I’m personally not all that interested in such crosses as the golden ones are great on their own. I have scions of some golden ones if you have a rootstock.
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Will get back with you on that. I had already planned on trying to get some fuzzy scion over the winter. Thanks. Do you happen to know if fuzzy will graft to hardy? I’ve got a ton of hardy that I’m considering getting rid of.
@scottfsmith How did you handle the latest hard frost? Curious if you were able to harvest your late apples like Yates
It was only 28F here, not a hard frost for apples. I did harvest all my veggies though.
We should have a few more weeks before the apples need to be harvested, I usually make it up to right before Thanksgiving. I usually harvest when its forecast to be below 24F or thereabouts, but the apples will make it a bit colder than that so there is some buffer if the forecast is off.
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