I am brand new here, but have gotten myself into a bit of a minor dilemna. I live on the Washington coast about 15 miles in from the coast above the Aberdeen area. I wanted to plant Kiwi for fruit and foliage and ordered a male and female Arctic Beauty over the weekend.
My dilemna is the diverse information I am finding over the amount of growth of this newly imported variety. I hear everything from 10 feet to 30 feet as its expected growth. The reason it is a problem is I am not sure where to plant it now.
I originally planned to build an arbor over my patio this weekend and to plant the male next to one post and the female next to another. This arbor would be approximately 12 ft. by 20 ft. and 10 ft. off the ground. This seems perfect if the 20 - 30 ft estimated growth is correct, but will not fill if the 10 ft. estimates are right.
I now am considering an old metal swing set that is cemented into the ground in my yard. I will remove the old rusted slide and plant each plant on either end of the two ladders that lead up to the monkey bars and train them to crawl toward each other.
Does anyone have any experience in our climate what type of growth I can expect? Either support system would be fine for me, but if I plant on the monkey bars and it wants to crawl 30 feet it will run out of room, but if I build the arbor and it grows only ten feet, it will only barely reach the top.
I have a pair of Arctic Beauty kiwi. I planted them in the direct sun when I bought them. They didn't do well. Then I read that they do better in shade so last winter I moved them to shade, they didn't do much last summer. Maybe this summer they will grow some. My Haward, Issai, and Hardy Red seem to do better in full sun than the Arctic Beauty did. I experimented with partially shading the Issai last summer and I think it was beneficial.
Thanks for the replies. I think I will go with the old swing set idea. If 7ft. pruining works well then I can keep it on this support and the sun and shade should be about right. I understand that I will need to build a cage around it while it gets going as we have a lot of outdoor cats on our place that we feed and they keep the moles down (good trade off for me).
Idyllwild
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