my meyer was 3' tall when i bought it a few years ago the first two years it had about 10-12 fruit, as they fruit got bigger and started weighing down the branches, and then the trunk started to bend towards one side, that's when i thinned out some of the fruit. i kept the green lemons and used them to flavor my ice water and iced tea. your tree is limber, but if you feel there's too many fruits on one branch and its bending more then you feel comfortable with, feel free to pick a few to lighten the load. as far as whether your tree has enough energy to support that many fruit, don't worry, if it can't it'll drop a few of them. from the time it blooms to the time the fruits mature, there's usually 2-3 phases of natural fruit drop so not to overburden the tree.

Wow - I guess we have been very lucky with our pumpkins! We started ours on a whim (had a package left at our house by the former owners, and thought it'd be fun to see if they grew) by seed in small peat pots in the garage back in May, and they took off like crazy. We planted them in the ground sometime in mid-late June. They were the first of all our plants to really take off once in the ground as well. As far as I know, my husband hasn't done anything special to care for them. We have a soaker hose for the entire garden, so they get the same amount as all the other plants. He uses some kind of organic fertilizer for all the plants, but not sure if he's used that on the pumpkins since they have been so prolific on their own. Our garden gets sun for most of the day - about 9am to 5pm. And it gets the heat as well. Wish I had suggestions/answers as to why ours have been so successful. Maybe it's the wasps/bees we have - I have a bunch of bird houses that I hung on the fence behind the garden, for decoration. Couple of weeks ago, when my husband was putting some nails and strings on the fence for the gourd vines to grab hold of, he discovered that the birds didn't like them, but the wasps sure did - they started to swarm him as they didn't like him being so close to their "nest"!!! Needless to say, we sprayed the houses well with some wasp spray! Marj

" A few have said, don't shade tomato plants, they love the sun no matter how high the temp. While others have said ABSOLUTELY provide them shade, especially on extremely hot days where the temp exceeds 90 degrees with midday sun. I'm a bit confused as to what's the best choice." It isn't an either/or choice. First because they are talking about normal weather patterns - which you don't have right now. Second, it depends on the age of the plants and the amount/degree of shade. Well established, big tall plants in the production stage of their life can tolerate much more sun and heat than young still-getting-established plants can. And we aren't talking about full dark shade, just something that cuts the sun exposure by 10-20% during the hottest part of the day (which is usually around 2-4 pm). Harry's old white sheet, window screens, or best some of the various row covers/shade cloth sold for that purpose. They still get plenty of sun but the heat is reduced a bit. And, even well-established blooming plants will not set fruit with temps in the mid-nineties so many use shade cloth just to drop the temps 5 degrees during those unusually hot periods. There are no absolute rules in growing. We have to adjust, to try to find a balance, for the variety of conditions as they develop. Dave

There is not a lot of good info out there on hardy kiwis, so whatever you can generate is helpful. After doing some research, it appears there IS a female 'Meader' kiwi. I find this to be extremely confusing for a dioecious plant to have both a male and a female clone with the same cultivar name. Unless you really know what you are doing (or the plants very clearly - and accurately - labeled as to gender), I can see all sorts of opportunities for picking the wrong sex and either never getting any fruit from a vine you expected to produce fruit or your other female vines not producing fruit because what you thought was a male pollinator is really not. A pretty dumb move, if you ask me!