I do a somewhat less extreme version of that, I prune my kiwis a lot in early summer but not so much in later summer. I also trim shoots longer than the 4" he does, I do more like a foot. I also thin back a lot in the winter, he made no mention of thinning. He has a really nice load on those vines so he clearly has the system down.

What approach have you seen before? I don't see a huge difference of this with other approaches, all the ones I know of involve a lot of summer pruning. On the fuzzy types the main difference is all those big water shoots they make, regularly prune them back to a short stub unless you need a replacement trunk or cordon.

I use battery-powered hedge trimmers on my kiwis, it takes me only 5 minutes to hedge them back.

Scott

The stuff I've read about training/pruning kiwis has them on a T-bar trellis with laterals maintained off the main cordons and then the fruiting spurs from the laterals.

I'm just trying to find a way to approach these plants without allowing them the upper hand and creating a monstrous structure. I'm more than willing to do frequent snipping as I make my daily rounds of the garden. I just want to be sure there is any hope for fruit from this kind of approach before I dive in.

I think the T-bar is the commercial training approach, like grapes the commercial folks have their precise forms but in the backyard you can do pretty much anything as long as it gets enough light and you keep it well-pruned. For kiwis there is the additional need for a solid structure, they can get quite heavy as they get older.

Scott

Do you know "Crush tipping"? It is a technique used in commercial orchards, pruning in vegetative phase, for Hayward and gold kiwis.
See below PDF link (page 4):

Managing Canopy Establishment in Hayward

It is not the definitive key for your question, but can be a useful tool.

Thanks Axier, thats a very useful guide. The New Zealanders are way ahead of the rest of us when it comes to kiwi management. That guide is focused on optimal efficiency for commercial production, but the crush tipping sounds like it would be a good home grower technique as well; I'll give it a try next spring.

Scott

I'm not sure how big you mean when you say 'large container'. My previous garden was limited on sunny space so I grew my male kiwi in a pot and put the girls in the ground. The pot was about 18 inches tall and 14 inches wide with a sturdy tomato cage that the male was trained onto and pruned heavily. He never grew the large water sprouts that the in ground ones did. He also never bloomed. I think your container would have to be extra big.