This rough pubescent berry is simply a storehouse of vitamin C. It is hard to believe that it has existed in this form for less than 100 years. Thanks to New Zealand breeders, it has become larger and much tastier. To understand whether it is possible to grow a healthy berry at home, imagine how a kiwi grows in its homeland.

How and where does kiwi grow in nature

Homeland Yang Tao, which is translated from Chinese means strawberry peach, China. The culture belongs to the genus Actinidia, a species of Chinese Actinidia. It was brought to New Zealand at the beginning of the 20th century. The Chinese berry weighed no more than 30 g. Thanks to the selection, it became larger, its taste was enriched not at the expense of useful properties that allow the fruit to be used for the treatment and prevention of many diseases.

Read also:actinidia: planting and care

Like her ancestress, kiwi is a vine. But in the wild, it does not occur. This is an artificially improved plant. Even a new name was invented for him.

Where does kiwi grow? Cultivated plantations of exotic fruit can be found wherever the climate allows it to grow: in Italy, South Korea, Chile, Greece. But recognized leaders in the production of this healthy berry are New Zealand and China. So the kiwi triumphantly returned to his homeland. Despite the considerable difficulties associated with the cultivation of this exotic fruit, the first plantations appeared not so long ago in Abkhazia, in the south of Dagestan, on the Black Sea coast of the Krasnodar Territory. In a word, now in order to find out how kiwi grows, you do not need to go abroad. You can see this exotic in our country.

Kiwi can withstand temperatures down to -15 degrees, so it winters well under cover even in regions with cool winters.

A biologist from Uzhgorod, G.V. Straton, through a lengthy selection created a new Kiwi variety - Valentine, which can withstand frosts up to -28 degrees without freezing! This plant will be able to winter even in the middle lane.

A creeper needs support; in the wild forest, trees play its role. On plantations, supports are created artificially by tying plants to specially stretched nets and established posts.

What does kiwi grow on? Like his ancestors, he loves fertile loose soil with a high humus content, moist, but without stagnation of water. Actinidia in the forest most often grows in partial shade. Cultural kiwi prefers the sun. And he needs regular watering, top dressing, mulching, pruning and shaping. The hassle of growing this berry is a lot. But this does not stop real gardeners. Many try to grow valuable fruit at home.

Growing at home

Growing kiwi from seeds is an exciting activity that requires patience and compliance with all the rules of agricultural technology. The first fruits will have to wait a long time - kiwi blooms only 3-4 years from sowing, sometimes flowering occurs only after 6 years of cultivation. But even flowering is not a guarantee that the fruits will set. This plant requires a pollinator. It is necessary that a kiwi man and a kiwi woman settle nearby. To maximize the likelihood of such a neighborhood, several copies of this exotic fruit will have to be planted in pots, since it is possible to find out whether a plant has grown, male or female, only with the beginning of flowering. On female specimens, the pestle in flowers is much larger. There are monoecious plants on which there are both male and female flowers. They do not need a pollinator.

With seed propagation of kiwi, at least 70% of the plants will be male.

Seed preparation and germination

Seeds are easy to get. To do this, just buy a kiwi in the store. The fruit must be fully ripe. Seeds in early spring possess the highest germination ability. It was at this time that they began to germinate.

The algorithm for preparing seeds for sowing is as follows.

  • Seeds are extracted from half the fruit and thoroughly washed from the pulp.
  • The seeds are dried.
  • Place on a cotton pad moistened with hot water, which is placed on a saucer.
  • Put on a plastic bag and put in a warm place. The package must be removed regularly so that the seeds are ventilated. The cotton pad should always be moist, but not waterlogged.
  • As soon as small roots appear, it is time to plant the seeds.

Transplant to the soil

For the initial cultivation, plastic containers with a transparent cover of a small volume are most suitable. This is a ready-made mini plaque for plants. At the bottom of each container, drainage is made and filled with a landing mixture of peat, sand, humus and sod land in equal parts. Seeds are laid out on the surface of a moistened planting mixture and sprinkled with a thin layer of soil. Its thickness should not be more than 3 mm. Germinated seeds germinate after 2 weeks. It is necessary to spray the soil surface with water, as young seedlings are very sensitive to lack of moisture. Gentle shoots shade from direct sunlight. As soon as 2 pairs of true leaves form in the plants, they are dived into larger containers.

How to make a pick?

In order for the plants to grow and develop well in the future, the soil is prepared for them in the same way as for seedlings, but they reduce the amount of peat due to an increase in the proportion of turf land and humus. The root system of the kiwi grows more in width than in depth, so the containers for planting are selected not too deep, but wide.

Dive sequence.

  • At the bottom of the container for landing, drainage is made.
  • They fill it with soil at 1/3 of the height of the pot.
  • Carefully remove the plant from the container in which it grew before the pick. An earthen lump cannot be broken, so 2 hours before a dive, plants are watered.
  • Place the plant in a new pot, sprinkling the roots with earth.
  • The first few days after a dive, small kiwis especially need protection from direct sunlight.

Kiwi propagation

About the seed method of reproduction described in detail above. It is inconvenient in that you have to not only grow many plants, but also wait a long time for fruiting. It is much easier to propagate kiwi vegetatively. For this, both lignified cuttings of the first year of life, which are harvested in winter, and green ones are suitable - they are cut in the summer. Rooted, they will completely repeat the signs of the plant from which they were cut.

The cut branch should not be thinner than 5 mm and have 3 buds. You need to cut them with a well-ground knife so that the slices do not wrinkle. The lower section should be directly under the kidney and have a slope of 45 degrees. The upper section is made straight, departing from the kidney for about 1 cm. In the cuttings of the summer harvest, all leaves are cut, except the top. It is shortened by a third. Harvested cuttings are placed with a lower cut in a container filled with water at room temperature to a height of 4 cm. After a day they are transferred to a solution of the root stimulant, which is kept for 24 hours. In both cases, a plastic bag is put on a container with cuttings. After this, the cuttings are ready for planting in the cuttings with peat soil. The nameplate should have a double cover - a film and a substrate of non-woven material. When using artificial fog, the rooting rate of cuttings is up to 95%. Rooted cuttings are planted in separate containers and grown in a greenhouse. In a warm climate, plants are ready for planting in the ground after a year, in other cases they are planted after 2 years.

Kiwi can be propagated by root pieces with a thickness of 1 to 1.5 cm and a length of 30 cm. They are planted in a substrate with a temperature of about 24 degrees. It should be constant, so you need lower heating. As soon as the shoots grown from sleeping buds reach a height of 15 cm, they are transplanted into separate containers, shortening the parent root. Subsequently, they are grown in the same way as rooted cuttings.

To obtain a large number of seedlings on plantations, the vaccination method is used: splitting, simple and improved copulation, summer budding with a shield in a T-shaped incision. Cowing can be done in spring and summer, all other types of vaccinations are carried out before budding.

Care Features

For the successful cultivation of kiwi, 3 components are enough: a lot of light, timely watering and annual feeding with biohumus or humus.

This plant can be grown only on the southern windowsill, but the light must be scattered. In winter, additional light bulbs may be required. Do not forget that it is a liana and will thank for its good care with rapid growth - an adult plant can reach up to 7 m. In the process of growth, it needs support. Any artificial restriction in growth will necessarily affect flowering and fruiting. Kiwi can be cut only at a dormant stage in winter, for which a temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius is needed, and after the leaves completely bloom in summer. In the phase of the onset of sap flow, the plant is very vulnerable and can simply run out of juice. Pinching the tops of the shoots will give the plant the opportunity to grow wide. In order for it to develop evenly, the kiwi pot must be rotated 15 degrees every 2 weeks.

Kiwi is very fond of water, so you need to water it regularly, but without fanaticism, so as not to cause root decay.

Exot can be fed once a year with organics. Biohumus or ripened compost is buried in a groove around the trunk. You can’t dig deep - the roots of the plant are superficial and it does not like loosening. It is better to mulch the soil in the pot, for example, with crushed wood chips or bark.In the summer, during rapid growth, complex mineral fertilizers for indoor plants will not be superfluous. The frequency of top dressing is once a decade. As the kiwi grows, more spacious dishes will be needed, where it is transplanted in the spring until the buds open.

Why does kiwi die?

The main reason for the death of the plant is an improper irrigation regime. Both a deficiency and an excess of water harm him.

Among the other reasons, the following can be distinguished:

  • the appearance of fungal diseases and untimely control of them;
  • undetected pests that they do not fight;
  • lack of lighting and power;
  • freezing of a plant, if it grows on a balcony or loggia;
  • cutting and pinching of shoots during active sap flow;
  • damage to young shoots by cats who really like the smell of kiwi.

In home culture, kiwi is rarely sick and damaged by pests. Subject to all the rules of agricultural technology, the plant will be healthy, will give delicious and very useful fruits.

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