Wow, Helen! I have never even seen a Golden Kiwifruit?! Where did you get it from? Is the taste different from the green ones?

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.

Hi Spatz

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

Hi Helen,
Kings Seeds have seeds I believe. Wouldn't swear to it though. Haven't seen a source for plants yet. I liked them so much I saved the seed and now have 20 or so very tiny kiwi vines. I'll keep as many as I can in pots until I can identify the boys and girls then plant out four or five girls and two boys. Don't know how many years I'll have to wait!
Ray

Ray

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?

They are for commercial growers only at the moment, but the theory is that the golds are a different species. If the commercial growers are pollinating them with a gold male then seed from the fruit should be fine : ), otherwise, well you'll have a half gold fruit. Also they say the New Zealanders allready have a gold/red one that's got red flesh inside for when we get sick of gold ones. I also have some seedlings, just one year old and still small so far : )

There is another species of Kiwi Fruit too...it has smooth skins...Phoenix used to sell the seeds...known as Tara vine

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

nicefrog - ta for the kiwigold info...I'll germinate them and wait like you and Ray to see what I get..

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

Do share your techniques for growing kiwis from seed. I'm getting interested.

To grow kiwi from seed you just get one that's been in cool storage for awhile (all the ones in the shop:) ) then smash them up, shake the sludge around in a glass of water scoop out the seeds best you can. Put them ontop some potting mix in a pot, sprinkle some more potting mix ontop then wait ! :) sooner than later you'll have a fair moss of kiwi seedlings, I'm not joking, you get near enough to 100% germination and more kiwi vines that you have a hope of potting up. There is also many more than the 3 common kiwi's (green, gold, hardy) there are like almost 20 species that are possible to get hold of

Hi everyone,

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

That's very interesting, Manuel.

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?

Thanks for the tips. I bought a few kiwigolds on Friday and they are delicious. I still have one and I'll try extracting some seed without wasting too much of the 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.

Well, it's been a couple of months and I have 22 Kiwi gold seedlings that I transplanted from the starter tray to individual pots. They are only about 5mm tall but they look healthy. Bring on 2015 so I can try some of the fruit.

Congratulations pepino, hopefully you wont have to wait that long! Mine havent germinated yet, but we have been getting some warm weather and I hope they will start soon :-)

Helen

I had better pot mine up!

Hrmpfh... I've got this shrivelled up kiwi fruit somewhere... must do something with it... like SOW it....

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.

If you can't plant it now I'd repot it into something larger. I don't think the pots they come in are intended to extend into next season. Try not to disturb the roots.

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.

Great! Thanks, pepino. I repotted them straight after I bought them. So they are already in bigger pots. :)

Nice to see this thread revived...

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.

How do tell male kiwi fruit from female kiwi fruit? do the fruit you eat have both male and female seeds?

Hi guys - newbie to the board here.

Apologies for reviving a dead thread but given that these are F1 hybrids that don't come true - what have peoples results been like? Are they much like the golden kiwis you find in the store or nothing like them at all?
I've got a few in pots - but if the results aren't great I might not persist with them