I had an issai for a while, it died over winter before it got fruit so I never tried it but you live in a much warmer climate than I do. make sure it gets some shade or it will burn to a crisp at least mine did as a young plant, it was potted initially I had it in full sun then I put in a spot where it only got a few hours of direct sun a day and it boomed before dying. ive also grown arctic kolomitkas (these are different than hardy aka arguta kiwis i think youre talking about which are fast growers and get a lot bigger), I had a couple die before I finally got 2 established, they haven't grown much but I have gotten a few fruits to try. theyre sweeter and less sour, i would describe them similar to gold kiwis you sometimes see in stores. personally i decided i like fuzzy kiwis better and the arctics were too much trouble for me to grow, but i didn't have the space for big hardy/arguta type kiwi which are better growers

It will be interesting to see what kind of fruit they produce (larger size of fuzzy with hardiness of issai would be awesome!!) We moved last summer and the location I put my issai's proved to be not a good one. It turned out to be a very wet area and this spring they were not looking to good. I potted the plants to relocate them later (not thinking they would survive) but they slowly came back and new shoots emerged from the base. I have about 20 flower buds just blooming right now but unfortunately no male currently blooming. On a side note, my Arctic Beauty male (also planted in the wet zone) suffered major rot at the base and the bark peeled right off. I noticed the previous years growth still looked okay so I clipped several 8" pieces of those branches and stuck them in a pot after dipping them in rooting hormone and covered with plastic. They all broke out in bud and started growing new vines and actually bloomed flowers all without any roots forming whatsoever on the cuttings!! I've added to my collection now with Meader(f) and Dumbarton's Oaks(f) to go along with my Anna and Issai. Have you had any experience with the 'A. Jumbo' variety???

Your silver vine will not pollinate your arguta kiwis as the polygama blooms several weeks before argutas. Even if you saved pollen and hand pollinated I believe chances of setting fruit would be marginal to nil but heck it would be worth a try. You could use male arguta pollen to pollinate kolomikta and polygama females If you were breeding hybrids but not so much the other way around. Same as fuzzy kiwi males can pollinate arguta females but not the other way around. It has something to do with smaller or shorter sperm of the smaller species which cannot reach where it needs to go in the larger species. I tried a few years ago to pollinate female argutas with kolomikta pollen with no luck. I plan on keeping a female kolomikta in the fridge and bring her out during arguta bloom period and see how that goes. It will be a good experiment for you though,simply cut off a few silvervine branches and put them in some water in the coldest part of your fridge then pull them out when the time is right. Good luck,Glenn

As a hardiness experiment, I planted an Issai that's been in the ground since the fall of 2011 but hasn't yet fruited. It had a lot of die back the first two winters, but very little last winter when it got down to -17. Usually we have quite a bit of snow, and I have let mine stay low so it would be well covered in the coldest weather, though it does usually get exposed to some below-zero weather before the snow is very deep. This winter will be a good hardiness test since currently we have less than 6" of snow and it's been at least -10 for the last several nights. The roots should be fine, but I am not sure about the above ground branches. I decided to try Actinidia since I have an acquaintance on the other side of town who lives on an exposed hill-top and grows it over a massive stone wall. She gets good crops, but I am not sure of the variety she has. Since she's somewhere near 1000 feet higher than I am and 10 or 12 miles away we probably have different microclimates, but I figured that it was worth a try since someone in my general area has been successful. If the one plant I have survives and fruits, I plan to plant more, but I do like to test hardiness before investing too much money in plants that aren't happy here. If the Issai isn't hardy enough for me, I may try some of the others since it is supposed to be the least hardy of the various varieties I've read about. I have soil that's acid enough for blueberries to grow wild, and regular rainfall that gives us just over 40" a year on average. My plant is in all day sun.