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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-475
Hardy Kiwi
Actinidia arguta
Hardy Kiwi is a vigorous twining vine that produces grape-sized fruit with smooth, fuzz-free skin, eaten whole and sweeter than fuzzy kiwi, with several times the vitamin C of blackcurrant. It needs a male vine nearby to pollinate the females - or the self-fertile Issai cultivar - and takes five to nine years before it fruits at all, but a mature vine then yields 50 to 100 lb a year. It survives brutal winter cold, but the spring shoots are frost-tender and get damaged most years where late frosts hit, and it needs sharp drainage or the roots rot in hot, wet clay.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–8
- Soil
- Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Vine- Soil pH
- 5–8
- Plant type
- Vine
- Mature height
- 25–30 ft
- Mature spread
- 7–20 ft
- Plant spacing
- 10–14 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
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Dioscorea bulbifera
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Akebia quinata
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Amur Grape
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Arctic Kiwi
Actinidia kolomikta
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Bottle Gourd
Lagenaria siceraria
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Boysenberry
Rubus ursinus x idaeus
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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