Do you know which actinidia? A. arguta appears to respond well to 3 months cold stratification while A. kolomikta may germinate better if given a warm moist period of a few weeks before the chill, then chilled, and finally brought back to warm.

In any case, placing the seed packet in the refrigerator doesn't do it, that's only storage - cool and dry is how you would want to preserve seeds, opposite of promoting germination. The cold/chill must be moist, you don't want to prevent moisture from breaching the seed coat. Put the seeds with a tsp or two of moist sterile sand, or moist sterile vermiculite in a zip lock, date it, and put that into your refrigerator. (harder seeds you would soak first, then place in the damp medium) When the suggested time is up, sow the contents of baggie, sand/vermiculite and all, no need to extract the seeds.

would GA3 get rid of the need for stratification? i like shortcuts :)

Hi plantlover,

Well, I've never tried growing Kiwi but I doubt that using GA3 would really help. In the past I've tried using GA3 on different seeds, and frankly I didn't see much difference in the germination times.

However, there is a pretty good web page (see link below) that may be helpful to you. What ever you try, I wish you the best of luck!

Art

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Kiwi from seed.

whoa, i don't even need stratification?

But wait, that's a different kiwi ?

Oh, sorry, I missed the fact that you were trying to grow the hardy kiwi. The hardy type may need stratification. Hopefully someone who has grown them from seed will come along and offer more help.

Art

Does anyone know how long dried kiwi seeds will stay viable at room temperature?

It seems there is no information about how long dried kiwi seeds will remain viable for, or even if they can be grown from seed after they've been removed from the fruit and kept in storage.