My Kiwi Vine Adventure

Years ago, when The Herb Farm was still operating in Fall City, Washington, I fell in love with a kiwifruit vine, Actinidia deliciosa. The vine at The Herb Farm covered the south side of their tiny store, giving it a perfect look for a nursery business. The kiwi had large, beautiful leaves that looked slightly tropical. I don't know this for a fact, but I assume that their ornamental kiwi was a male plant, since a bushel or two of fruit raining down on their customers as they came into the store would not have been quite as appealing as the vine itself.

As soon as I moved to my tiny house in Portland, I decided it was time to try my hand at growing a kiwi of my own. After reading through the available literature, I decided that a hardy kiwi would be the easiest to grow, so I took a trip to the local nursery and purchased a male and female pair of Arctic Beauty kiwifruit vines, A. kolomikta. Unfortunately, my experience with this plant was disappointing. The female succumbed within a month, and the male, though it survived, was mauled by my cats, who found the odor of the vine completely irresistible. I discovered later that this variety has a chemical that can be used as a sedative for large cats, so I suppose I can say that my felines became addicted to it. They scratched the bark to get at the odor they were so attracted to, so my poor kiwi vine never grew very large. It also refused to climb or twine on my fence, so in the following spring I pulled it out.

However, I wasn't ready to give up, so I made another trip to the nursery and chose another variety of hardy kiwi, the A. arguta. This time, I was not disappointed. The leaves of this variety do not have the red patches on their leaves that make the A. kolomikta so ornamental, but they do have beautiful red stalks and veins on their large, six to eight inch wide oval leaves.

My baby vines took off immediately, perhaps because my previous experience taught me to give them good, well-draining soil and plenty of water. I actually moved the vines after several months, because it became obvious that the fence I first planted them by was nowhere near big enough to hold them. After the first year, they completely covered a six-foot high, 20 foot long fence along the front of my property. Blue morning glories reseeded from the previous year, and I allowed a few of them to twine among the kiwis. The combination of the beautiful tropical leaves of the kiwi and the brilliant blue of the morning glories created a show-stopping combination.

Hardy kiwis take several years before they're established well enough to set fruit, and I sold the house before I could harvest any from my vines. However, I'm convinced that the lush growth of the vines on my front fence was one of the reasons that my house sold as quickly as it did.

Now I live on the other side of the mountains, where winter temperatures can drop to 10 degrees below zero or more. I intend to plant a pair of hardy kiwis to cover the side of my garage, but I realize that I may not have the success that I experienced in Portland. Although the hardy kiwi can withstand temperatures down to -25^o during the dead of winter, new spring shoots can be damaged if a late frost occurs after a warm period in spring. Since it is not completely unknown for frosts to occur here even in July, I'll need to keep a close watch on the weather forecasts and be ready to cover my kiwis. I think the beauty of these vines will make the effort worth it. and I hope the fruit turns out to be as tasty as advertised, as well.