Sorry. I should have put this in the seed starting forum. I will do that now and bump this down. Sorry!

The thing to know about kiwis is that they are supposed to have "Male" and "Female" plants...1 male for 2-3 females. I got some at a nursury years ago and all but one female died. No kiwis. Michelle

Also, they're very slow to fruit. Our nursey has 3 year old plants, they could take another 7 years to fully establish and produce.

Thank you For the extra info !!!

We first bought fuzzy kiwi vines 10+ years ago. The female died and we didn't realize it till about 6 or 7 years ago. We bought a replacement and this is the first year we have fruit - it looks like a pretty good crop. We have a couple of hardy females but our golden retrieve prunes them at the worst time so we have never had any fruit from them. The male is huge and we cut it back to less than 1/2 every year. Just be patient it takes a while.

Kiwi takes about 6 years to produce fruit from seed. If you plant seeds in the ground, there is a high die off rate. As the posters above said, they are male & female plants. If you are willing to experiment, you can get tons of seedlings from one kiwi. You will need to clean the fruit material from the seeds. Then place them in moist sphagnum peat in a baggie & place them in a warm place. It seems to take a long time; about a month, but then they seem to sprout all at once. You then need to transplant them into pots filled with peat, wean them off the baggie method, & go from there. I have found this method to be much more successful than growing them in soil.

Hi, I have this rather large vine growing i have been told that it is a kiwi fruit. Its leaves are large almost as big as the palm of my hand on the lower parts of the vine and its a little fussy on the stem. How do I tell is it's a he or a she. It would have started out from my compost!

Kiwi takes about 6 years to produce fruit from seed. If you plant seeds in the ground, there is a high die off rate. As the posters above said, they are male & female plants. If you are willing to experiment, you can get tons of seedlings from one kiwi. You will need to clean the fruit material from the seeds. Then place them in moist sphagnum peat in a baggie & place them in a warm place. It seems to take a long time; about a month, but then they seem to sprout all at once. You then need to transplant them into pots filled with peat, wean them off the baggie method, & go from there. I have found this method to be much more successful than growing them in soil.

I got a bunch of kiwi seeds and placed them between two moist paper towels and under a grow light. It has been a couple days and i have been keeping them moist but now it is starting to get all moldy. the paper towel. any tips? should i take the seeds out before they can get ruined, leave them in there and see what happens or what?

To April15:

Both lots of flowers are white. Boy flowers have a mass of little stalks coming from the middle with anthers on the tips. Similar to (but much smaller than) those on lilies. Girl flowers have a ring of anthers and a central set of semi-translucent 'threads', and a swelling behind the flower.

Expect the vine to wander for 4m+ and wrap around anything. It has similar habits to Wisteria.

The flowers aren't that popular with bees, unfortunately. Bees are the pollinators and it needs a fairly high density of beehives to get a crop set (not to mention good weather).

I'd expect any fruit to be much fuzzier and smaller than the ones from the supermarket, although they may come true to type. Not sure about this aspect.

Hi Vetivert8, Thanks for the expalnation about male and female Kiwi Flowers. I did plant a whole kiwi fruit in a pot with potting mix I put it aside for a few months and now I have a bunch of seedlings! Just waiting on them to grow large enough to transplant. I wonder how many boys and girls there are???? It should be an interesting experiment...........

Last year I had this vine grown from nowhere and I didn't know what it was. I put it in a pot approx 10" in diameter. The vine grew to approx 7ft. I was told it might be a KIWI FRUIT but needed gals and guys. So last summer I got an over ripe kiwi and put in in a pot covered it with potting mix placed it in the shed and forgot all about it, now I have all these new seedlings.They are about 2in high but are the same as my first vine! I just have to plant a bunch of them to make sure we get the girls and boys. It is a very interesting experiment and the fruit should be nice to eat. I just have to wait, and wait some more.

I've grown Kiwis from supermkt seed. I'm in z6b so they die back to the ground every year. I will never get fruit, I think they fruit on year old wood, at least. Anyway they make an interesting ornamental, very fuzzy leaves and vine too. The younger parts are red, turning green. No pest problems here.

what's the best way to plant kiwi seeds. I've heard lots of different things. Can anyone tell me some of their personal success stories with this?

Isliced my fruit into very thin slices and laid them on a paper plate to dry, it has been about a week....how do you get the seeds out of the pulp?? When the whole fruit was planted in the pot and set aside in storage..was it ever watered and how long was it in storage, was it in a dark room? I would like to have a plant, I'm not really interested in growing the fruit...it would be nice, will be happy if I can just grow a plant

I think I will try this method that suggested itself. The main vine should be flexible enough over 18 or more inches to bend over to the ground. The vine grows on a trellis. Lay the trellis on the ground and build a cold frame over it by just laying down 2x4's on edge and draping a plastic sheet overall weighted down with rocks at the edge. Thick layer of mulch over the roots and that should be plenty of insulation within the temperature range suggested. We had only one day of snow in Lexington. The temperatures were very mild as they have been since global warming. The snow in more northern climes would be good insulation as the snow melts from the bottom up keeping the interior at 32. I can see no reason why the vine couldn't just grow a bit in the early spring under the clear plastic sheet. Then when frost is past crank the trellis back up and it should be very happy. :-D The trellis shouldn't need to be vertical. Since I just bought some giant kiwi I might just start sproutin some!

I realize this is an old post but decided to throw in my 2 cents.

I bought one kiwi and cut away as much of the non-seed containing fruit as I could. Then I put the remainder of the fruit in a bowl of cool water and smushed up the fruit with my fingers. "Naked" seeds sank to the bottom and the pulp floats to the top. I would remove the seed-free pulp bits or let the seeds settle and decant off the pulp. Then repeat with clean water. After a few go-throughs I just had seeds and lost very few to the decanting.

I put the seeds in regular potting soil in a plastic chinese food container with a translucent lid, and put it on a sunny window ledge. Within a week, I had a carpet of seedlings.

This was my mistake. I wasn't familiar with how the plants grew and I tried to separate them all by hand and repot them. In doing so I lost nearly all of them. BUT - a couple of them made it, and have been planted outside in my garden. They grew about 6 feet in the first year up the side of a fence.

Next time, I'll use those peat pellets.

Good luck.