Rooting hardy kiwis
I love rooting
experiments so much that I'll often mail people cuttings as long as they
promise to report back on their methods and success rate. One of
our favorite* readers, Brian Cooper,
wanted to expand his hardy kiwi operation, so I sent him cuttings from
all three of our plants, many of which grew roots as you can see.
Brian reported:
"My
plan was to bury them vertically and once they poked out then add more
compost to the base to allow rooting of the new growth. Two rooted
from the new growth but they also rooted from the hardwood, so it did
work but it probably wasn't necessary. A lot of the compost that
was added settled down and the new growth was still above the
compost. I made the cuttings a bit shorter so they fit under my
humidity dome and this left a lot of 2" pieces that I put a layer of
compost over, and some of them rooted up as well. I think if I was
to do it over, I would just bury all the cuttings (4-6" pieces)
horizontally under 1/2" to 1" of compost or dirt."
It turned out that 1 of 7
Male cuttings rooted, 6 of 10 Anna cuttings rooted (even though the
cuttings had flower buds on them), and 9 of 12 Dumbarton Oak cuttings
rooted. So if you have a kiwi plant and want to make more, Brian's
method looks like a pretty good bet!
* Okay, I know I
shouldn't play favorites. But I love readers who share their
experiments and make thought-provoking comments!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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comment 1
That is great to know as our local urban deer love my female kiwi but leave the male alone.
Comment by
Fostermamas
— Mon Jun 2 12:07:19 2014
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