I need to find a male hardy kiwi. Mine died last year and my female is now flowering. All the fruit will be lost if I can't find a male to pollinate with. So, I need to either find a flowering male and harvest some pollen (with out hurting the plant) or if someone has plants I would love one of those too. I have tons of stuff to trade, like herbs, flowers, veggie seedlings.

Really strange because I was wondering the exact same thing yesterday! There was a female flower open and the male flower was almost open so i pealed it open and to be surprise, there didnt seem to be any pollen!? Just the yellow clump in the middle. I went ahead to hand pollinate anyway but I dont think I succeeded because the fruit behind the female flower doesnt look any bigger today... this isnt my first time hand pollinating but ive never come across a male with no pollen! Hoping things will get better next round!

Yeah, 2 years is kinda young -- they'll be more likely to bloom in another 1 to 2 years. The male flowers have big, fluffy black stamens in the middle against the white petals. Female flowers have big, chartreuse/yellow/green pistil with mini baby kiwi at the base. I know it's frustrating, but hang in there. You might want to threaten it with death - I told my stupid Shipova tree that it was going to get cut down if it didn't finally bloom this year, and, after something like 10 or 12 years, it finally did and set a few fruit, albeit not as many as I had hoped for due to a freeze on May 10th right as it was opening its buds.

Normally when they fall off its water, either too much or too little possible temps or suinlight as well. they like LOTS of sun. They dont like the roots being wet for long, they need very fast draining soil. this is the number 1 problem for most i have seen, especially if the temps are under 60 degrees. As far as sex... I have had several papaya go from female to bisex. i just had one go from bi-sex to a male ( i had chopped the top off to make the fruit grow lower) I also have had several that will have perfect flowers and either male or female flowers at the same time on them. Sometimes i get fruit with no seeds, sometimes with one or 2 seeds. The perfect flowers have the stamens near the bottom of the flower under the petals (you may have known this, just making sure) I think sometimes they dont develop very well (stamens) It may be because the seeds came from the store and were an F1 (or other) hybrid -- stamens are circled... --- ------------------- my papaya chopped top few inches (regrowth) ---- This post was edited by greenman62 on Mon, Oct 21, 13 at 9:46