Kiwi Cuttings

I now have 5 different kiwi cuttings (A. Arguta, A chinensis, A deliciosa).  
These cuttings are 18 inches long and a pencil thick.
I have a heated, LED lighted Grow Room with small humidity tent, along with heat mats.  

I will start in a sand(70%), vermiculite(25%), compost mix(5%)?  and 90% RH, some mycogrow.  
Spray with Vitamin B12 water 2x day.
Since these are so long I will cut them to be 3 buds plus enough to bury.  

I have been told that chinensis Kiwi is hard to do from cuttings but this will be an adventure.
any suggestions???

Willow water to enhance rooting? I haven't done this but am looking forward to hearing about your experience.  Good luck!

Per Bob Guthrie (the primary actinidia submitter in the National Germplasm Database) airlayering is the best method for propagating kiwifruits. Other people have tried rooting cuttings on different forums and had some success with wet sand in a bucket, but the rooted plants all died (in this thread https://growingfruit.org/t/kiwi-varieties-whats-your-favorite/5196/90). This only is true for non hardy kiwis, apparently they are pretty easy from cuttings with hormone.

For the fuzzy Kiwi rootstock that did not die out this last spring, I am trying an airlayering method where the stem goes through a hole in the bottom of a plastic grow pot. Filled with a mix of dirt and peat and covered with small pine chips.  I will need to check them soon since it has been a couple of months since I did this.  I will see if I can graft onto these in the next year or so.

My air layering experiment was unsuccessful.  

i've had some success ground layering kiwis, even doing so with potted kiwi viines. digging out a small trench along the very edge of the pot, and then bending the kiwi vine down to the soil level, holding it down with rocks and then covering it with some soil. a long while later you can dig it up and transplant to ground or new pot once it gets established a season or four later....

i am not generally very good at cuttings and have failed every time i tried to do straight cuttings. well i can get some stuff to go some times, but way prefer to ground layter....or my odd little pot layering technique as described above....

Dennis how did the kiwi-cuttings in the first indoor techno set-up you described do?
I've tried to do cuttings from a kiwi of a neighbor that is very succesfull in the cold ground years ago. All died.
I've tried 5 kiwi's that i bought in the store or that were given to me, the last one (kiwi berry) is still alive and going into it's second year, the four previous ones died.
They were all of the cold-hardy kind and pitted against a south facing wall receiving loads of sun, in a place where i watered them.

Leila, four years you say? Hmmm i think i might have forgotten to take one ground-layered kiwi vine out of the ground at my neighbors... Shall have to return to take a peek soon. Maybe this time i will be lucky. And if not i'll have the change to ground layer another one. What's four years anyway? Sigh.

Hugo, so far unsuccessful in my techno set up.  I had the humidifier set up on the bottom and it did not allow the humidity to reach the upper levels where the kiwi was.  I tried to make everything level but did not have the space.  
I will try some cloches this time. I have around a dozen plastic jars of large size and they fit well onto 5 inch plastic pots.  
I will try heat mats under and a cooler room to see if that helps.

Put together a new humidity system.  It keeps a constant humidity of 85 to 95%rh.  It also has bottom heat that is 75F.  Hazel nuts seem to be real happy in this.  Only time will tell.