I have tried my first golden kiwifruit and found it sweet and delicious and now I want to grow my own. Does anyone know where I can source some plants or are the NZ patented and not available. I have looked at Daleys but they dont have any

regards

helen

For the first time in my life I've tasted home-grown kiwifruit from a neighbour. They were delicious. Much better than bought ones. Why didn't that surprise me? Now I have to pluck up my courage and ask for cuttings.

I got the kiwifruit from the local grocery. It tasted sweeter than the green. I am growing the hardy kiwifruit. They are the size of grapes and have smooth skin, they are reportedly sweeter than the larger common kiwifruit, but I have to wait until mine produce.

helen

That is good news about the seeds. I'll save some and see how I go. thank you

helen

PS How are you fairing in the cold?

The Chinese call KF "Hairy Goats Balls "...don't know what they call the yellow ones let alone the smooth ones
cheers
Peter

Peter - Tara vine is another name for the Hardy Kiwifruit A.arguta. I have the plants available from diggers which are called Issai and are self-pollinating.

helen

Regarding Kiwi Gold, or Zespri Gold, it is a different species to the green kiwifruit. Actinidia deliciosa is the traditional green kiwifruit. The gold kiwifruit is Actinidia chinensis. I think male A. deliciosa pollinators may pollinate female A. chinensis plants, but I don't know whether fruit set would be all that good.

Here is the bad news: HortResearch N.Z. have developed the Gold Kiwifruit as a trademarked plant variety. It is subject to plant breeders' rights and is only available to New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Association (Zespri) for growing. They are also developing several other Actinidia species for commercial cultivation, all different. You may have seen obscenely priced Kiwiberries in the supermarkets last year. They are yet another species, Actinidia arguta. This one is available in Australia from Daley's nursery.

That said, other, perhaps not as good A. chinensis cultivars are available that are not subjected to Plant Breeder's rights. 'Jia' comes to mind, but I don't know if it can be found outside the USA.

Thirdly you can sow seed of ripe gold kiwifruit yourself, and select among the mish-mash that will emerge. This is because gold kiwifruit is an F1 hybrid between two cultivars of A. chinensis and the progeny will be anything in between the parents. You'd need to grow a lot of plants and select a good female that is both tasty and juicy and has a good sized fruit. I am doing this and have a few seedlings that I'm preparing trellises for right now. It will be a 7-10 year undertaking, till they mature and fruit, and each plant needs 4 meters of row space and the rows are 7 meters apart... you get the idea, and probably can understand the logistics involved in the variety development, hence why it's trademarked. I reckon it will be well worth it, as they are delicious and my own seedlings will not be subjected to PBR.

Kiwifruit seed is easy to germinate if sown directly after it dries... I clean it off the pulp, dry for 48 hours, then soak 24h, and place in a wet tissue with excess water squeezed out. I check every day and sow germinating seeds in good potting mix as soon as the root tip shows.

Cheers

So what will the female/male ratio be if you take the seeds of 1 kiwi fruit?

I suppose there will be male and female seeds in one fruit?

At 66c each I'm not sure if it is worth waiting 10yrs for something that might resemble the original, but that's never really stopped me before.

Helen

Anyway, I've got a 'proper' male and female kiwi fruit plant in pots. Can I leave them in their pots until next year or are they desperate to get into the ground?

I do have a perfect spot for them, but we may have to rethink things due to doing up the area I intended to plant them in to make it more fireproof (it being very close to the house where a bushfire would hit). Yeah, frantically carrying out fire prevention measures - again. *sigh*

Does that make sense? Or should I not post after one glass of extremely delicious red wine. Might have to go and have another glass.

Ray, I potted mine up because they were in a very shallow tray to germinate. It was less than 1 inch deep, a recycled aluminium custard tart tray with some holes poked in the base, from memory.

I have 12 seedlings of golden kiwifruit ranging from 1m (last years... amazingly vigorous) tall to 20mm (this years). I have them in 25cm pots in the greenhouse and they're doing very well. I will put these along the chook fence to grow a bit, and in two seasons or so I should know which are the males and females.

I found they grew to about only 15cm high in the first season, but as soon as spring arrived last seasons dormant stock exploded into huge growth by comparison.

Separately in a large wirework trellis I have a hardy kiwifruit (Actinidia arguta, I think this is also known as the tara vine), a male pollinator of green kiwifruit, and a 'Hayward' green kiwifruit female. The male kiwifruit pollinator can pollinate both A. chinensis and A. arguta in addition to A. deliciosa. The wirework trellis is 2m high, with five parallel wires at the top, spaced 30cm apart to support growth. The male pollinator is in the middle, and each female sits 5 meters away either side. This gives the plants a lot of room to grow. Looking at This link on kiwifruit growing will give you a good idea of the setup I used. It is also an excellent source of general Kiwifruit growing info.

My plan is to use one of the two sides of the male plant (I don't need that many male flowers to pollinate two other plants) to graft various female seedlings I have grown and taste the fruit quality. As I cut off inferior clones I can simply use the branch stump left to graft a new seedling. This allows the seedlings to fruit earlier and I can test a much larger number of them than growing them as self-rooted plants. It also would allow me to grow about 10-20 clones to be tested in a year, if all goes well. It is a long term project, but I'll write about what happens when I get some fruit!
Once I settle on a productive and tasty clone I'll put up a new trellis with three new plants parallel to the first one, or maybe just graft the golden kiwifruit as a new permanent cordon on one side of my male plant, which will result in half the plant bearing fruit and the other half male flowers for pollinating the other plants.