Jade,

That's a nice sturdy looking trellis. I have something much flimsier in mind for my first hardy kiwis.

I bought a Ken's Red and male from One Green World at the exchange. I've heard good things about Ken's Red.

What variety did you choose?

I chose Ken's Red because I read very flattering comments about it in a web forum and because my wife has been brought up wanting hardy kiwi several times. When I ask what variety she prefers she says "red".

One poster said that Ken's Red was uniquely free of funny greenbean off taste that many hardy kiwi have.

I've heard only good reports about it so I figured that was the one.

Thanks for the advice.

Last year at this time we had millions of lugs on our lawn (at least many thousands). I thought that was something we were going to be in for every year and I'm not entirely sure that we won't.

The property had been allowed to overgrow for a couple of years and apparently that is good slug habitat. Last summer I mowed down the thistle, grasses, blackberries and weeds.

Our neighbors have a big flock of ducks and a few times last Fall we heard them in our yard going nuts. I think they ate nearly all of the slugs.

I'm hoping that our future slug pressure won't be nearly as bad as I'd feared. I'm guessing the ducks stayed away when it was a jungle but thought it was great when the slugs were just all out in the open lawn. Either that or our neighbors just lost contain on the ducks a couple of times and these were their first chances to get over to our yard.

Funny i'm thinking about getting ducks and was looking into hardy kiwi specifically to grow for them (using their housing as trellis). Who knew the hardy kiwi needs the ducks, symbiosis!