Arctic Kiwi Male and Female Flowers

I have a male and a female Actinidia kolomikta (one of a couple of species of Arctic Kiwi that grow in our climate) in bloom. A male plant is needed to fertilize the blossoms of the female plants, and they both make flowers. I was curious to learn how to tell the flowers apart.

Easy, as it turns out, once you look. The female flower has white stigmas and styles that radiate from the center. The male flower has yellow stamens dangling from thin filaments.

When I first saw the variegated foliage, I thought it was diseased! But no, it has splashes of white and even pink. A most attractive plant. Some people even grow the male plants only, just for the foliage. But the fruits are delicious, grape-sized little kiwis. You don’t need to peel them as the skin is smooth. They taste just like the larger variety that you can buy in the grocery store. They will fall off the vine when they get really ripe and sweet, so it probably pays to harvest them a bit early and let them ripen in a bowl.

Growing Kiwis in Nova Scotia

Kiwi flowers
Flowers on female Actinidia kolomikta

It’s the hardy kiwi, Actinidia kolomikta. The fruits are the size of a large grape, less fuzzy than their New Zealand cousins, and delicious, apparently. I’ve never eaten one or even seen one.

But I hope to soon! I’ve got a boy plant and a girl plant in the backyard, and they seem to like each other….

This kiwi is hardy to Zone 4 (we are in Zone 5b or 6a, warmer than Zone 4) and has a reputation for vigour. In fact, frequent pruning is required to train the vines properly and to help the plant concentrate its energy into growing fruit.

The vines need a sturdy structure to grow on, and it shouldn’t be too tall to reach for pruning, or you’ll lose the battle for fruit development. A strong timberframe trellis would be the ideal thing.

I’m training mine on the 10-ft high trunks of a cherry tree that I cut down last summer. (It was non-productive and besieged by cherry slugs, or sawfly larvae.)

I have a couple of friends in the area who are also excitedly growing hardy kiwi for the first time. One of these years, we’ll have our first taste of the fruit, if we can keep the squirrels and birds away from it.