Kiwis are easy to graft. Wait til the leaves are about 2" long in the spring, and graft the dormant shoot on using your favorite grafting method. Cut a few nicks in the stock to let the sap bleed out. Be very careful to rub off any sprouts below the graft, some varieties take forever to get going and you may need to do this several times.

I've been trying to do the same with hardy kiwis for the same reason. Zero success with grafting so far. I've also tried grafting muscadines, persimmons, and pawpaw trees. None have taken.

Garymc - I have successfully grafted a few fruits. I have found that most of my failures were due to the misplacement of the scion. There was not sufficient contact with the Cambrian layer. I have already taken some cuttings of honeyberry and figs this year to use to start new plants. Of 11 honeyberries, 9 have shown signs of rooting. The figs, none so far. I am not going to take cuttings from fuzzy kiwi, apricot, peach, plum and cherry until February. Those I am going to use as grafts and to try to root. There is a method for grafting called approach grafting during which you root the cutting and then graft the rooted scion onto the rootstock tree while both are still supported by roots. I may try that with the kiwis and fruits. What kind of paw paws do you have? I have Susquehanna and Shenandoah. My persimmon is Fuyu.

I have a couple of mango pawpaws, couple of seedlings and one other named variety, but I don't know which. I bought 3 pawpaws 10 or 12 years ago. Susquehanna or Shenandoah or Potomac or Wabash, etc. All but one died and I don't know which it is. It took 8 years before it flowered. My seedlings flowered in 4 years and are about the same size at 6 years of age. One of the 2 mangoes had a pawpaw on it this year, but I didn't know it until I found it rotting on the ground. I bought a Hana Fuyu and a Matsumoto aka Wase Fuyu 2 years ago. My lawn service mowed the Hana Fuyu down below the graft and the rootstock came up with a vengeance. I'm going to try to graft the Matsumoto onto the Hana Fuyu rootstock. I have a bunch of fig trees, about 20, but I'm getting tired of all the trouble it is to keep them alive through the winter in zone 7. My main interests are muscadines, aronia berries, and elderberries from which I make wine, juice, and jelly. I had a few pawpaws last year and made some ice cream like frozen dessert. I'm going to be doing a lot of that with the pawpaws. Oh, I forgot to mention, I'm growing hardy kiwis. I started a hardy kiwi growers group on Facebook named hardy kiwi growers to try to get some people with firsthand experience together. You can grow fuzzy kiwis in Northern Virginia? What zone?

Garymc - I had 2 female and 1 male anna hardy kiwi vines that I grew for about 15 years. I supported them with large "T" trellises, connected by wires. They were a lot of work since I had to prune them 3-4 times a year to keep them under control. I would harvest about 2 gallons of kiwis a year and I mostly made jam from them. Last year I decided that they were more work than they were worth and pulled them out. I now use the space for vegetables. I am in zone 7a, Fairfax County Virginia. Here is a photo of my vines a few years ago..

Way off topic, but I also grow big white cushaw pumpkins. I've been canning them recently.

Gary - My grandmother grew cushaws, but she called them squash. Her's were yellow/orange, like pumpkins. I don't have room to grow them. So you stew them with onions and can them? Or do you just cook them and can them. Any vines I plant, I have to trellis. I grow cucumbers and cantaloupe, but the cantaloupe have not dome well. My fuzzy kiwis run up and on top of my pergola. I planted Shenandoah pawpaw seeds and gincko baloba seeds in my little green house yesterday. It takes about 3-4 months to germinate.

I’d imagine because it’s dual purpose:; grown for shade structure as well as fruit

No rotting fruit problem. Work required - pruning in the late winter, 1-2 hours. Fruit is the goal, it is not my goal to save money. So far, no pest problem. Got 88 kiwis in October. Ate some, gave some to friends and have some to eat.

Charlie - I just cook the cushaw cubes until they're softening up and turning to mush with some still solid, but enough mush to fill the air spaces. I don't usually put anything in with them except a couple of times I've added sugar and cinnamon. They're slightly sweet, so I usually make a dish that's either a dessert or can be used as a side dish like sweet potatoes. My wife has used them in a soup that would be a onion-garlic kind of thing.

I bet now you have a decent sized plant that produces a lot of fruit