I can't find much about growing kiwi fruit for newbies like me and none of the nurseries around here know much either.

I'm wondering if I'll hurt them too much if I prune them now since it is so warm. We've had days in the 90s. Every kiwi pruning video I've seen shows pruning done in the winter. Since I made so many mistakes in the beginning (but not enough to kill the plants), I'm wondering if I can start to make up for them now by pruning correctly.

With grapes I gather you are supposed to keep cutting the main trunk vine back until it reaches at least pencil thickness while it grows up close to the top of the trellis.

I had 6.5 foot tall T-bar trellises put in 15 ft apart when I bought the two plants - a female Anna and a male Issai (if I remember correctly) - arctic kiwis. I planted them at each end hoping I'd luck out and they'd grow like crazy and I selected what seemed to be the best vine for each plant to grow up the trellis.

The first summer I thought the female was not going to make it through but after the winter, she came back and I tried pruning-- although I wasn't really sure what I was doing.

Now the trunks of both plants are nearly an inch thick and each have about 5 bushy branches growing off to the side. However each plant is only about 3 ft tall. The female however has two fast growing cordons (I guess). They are very thin vines with small leaves growing every few inches along the vines. These are the only part of the plant that reach up to the top of the trellis and I have placed them over the wires headed down to the other end of the trellis.

Should I cut these off? (I guess grape growers don't let grape vines approach the top of the trellis until they are at least pencil thickness as I mentioned before.)

If growing kiwi fruit is similar to grapes it seems I need to try to coax the lower bushier part of the plant up to the top of the trellis and probably cut off some of the branches. Although I'm wondering if my trellis is too high. Maybe I should rig up something lower so the existing branches can be trained along those.

Does this make sense? Can someone help? I've called my local college horticulture extension office but their aren't many kiwi growers around here so I[m not holding out much hope that they will know a lot about growing kiwi fruit.

I'm in zone 7b 8a in SC. Thanks in advance.