Kiwis in cooler climates??

Hi everyone. I' new here. This is my first post.

I'm living in Amsterdam Holland, and working a 200 square meter permaculture allotment. I'm going to be building a small house (shed with a bed actually) on the site, which I was planning on training kiwi vines to grow up the south facing wall.

I know I'm not really in the right climate for kiwi, but I thought about harvesting heat with stones, and maybe painting the south wall of my shed black. Does anyone have any experience with trying this? or know any types of kiwi which I would maybe have a better chance with?

Thanks 

There is a cold hardy variety, I bought one recently myself but I have a fairly warm winter.  I would love to visit your city someday, what kind of winters do you have?

Actinidia arguta (hardy kiwi) should do fine in Holland. Hardy kiwi fruits are only a quarter of a normal kiwi fruit but instead you don't have to peel them. My neighbour here in Köln/Cologne grows them on a trellis like vine. They are very frost tolerant, down to -30 degrees, and they have a fun part: Fruits in the shadow ripen first, fruits in full sun take longer on the same plant.

the first frost is usually just after Halloween, then the temprature drops to -15C (-5F I think) around Xmas, I start plating my broad beans sunchokes and first salads arounf the end of march begin april as the soil warms up again although there is still risk of a freak frost untill the middle of may.

I was reading Plants for a future, and the kiwi page(http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Actinidia%20deliciosa)
doesn't mention a problem with growing kiwi in the UK, while another page I found  (http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/Actinidia_deliciosa) claims that kiwi needs 240 frost free days to be successful. which will be impossible for me.
I've looked around and can't find seeds for hardy kiwis here. do you think your friend on Koln would like to post me some? or share the info of where she got her seeds?

Hardy kiwis are also, in my opinion, far more delicious than fuzzy kiwis.

There is also a super-hardy kiwi, Actinidia kolomikta, which grows in Northern Russia and is said to be hardy to -34C.

I can try but normally they eat the fruits directly from the bush. They are so small they just pop them into their mouths. It would be much work to peel the tiny seeds out of the fruit.

Nonetheless even Bakker (biggest european plant supplier and a hollandish company) sell hardy kiwi as mature plants. One plant costs less than 15 Euros and my neighbour is harvesting many kilogram of one plant every year.

He has a female Bayern-Kiwi (or Weiki) and a male Nostino-Kiwi.

Thanks allot for all the help. I'm going to order some seeds for the hardy kiwis, grow them in doors over winter, and plant them out next summer.

Hardy or oriental kiwi thrive here in coastal British Columbia and are edible from mid September through December .  I bought mine, male and female vines were planted and they took seven years to produce but they are absolutely worth it!  Amazing delicious sweet and citrusy mouth sized bites in abundance most years.  Fuzzy kiwi grows here too but I have a hard time ripening them satisfactorily.    I built a pergola for them , inspired by those at the Botanical Gardens at the University of British Columbia.  Mine have been hardy to minus 16 degrees celcius with no signs of winter damage. 

what is your growing zone, i'm zone 4/5 and i haven't bought any kiwi vines as of yet, but they are supposed to be hardy to zone 5 at least..but the hardy ones are smaller, more the size of a grape. I'll be interested to hear the comments to your post

We are zone 7 in coastal British Columbia just north of the 49th paralell  and grow both types of kiwi but I far prefer the hardy oriental variety. Last winter we had one night dipping down to minus 20 degrees celsius which I think equates to about minus 6 farenheit and no noticable damage at all to mature vines or the previous years growth. 
The seven years till bearing held true both at my coastal   mainland location planted in unimproved  clay soils and also in poor soil at my mother in laws on Vancouver Island . But that waiting period was worth it and I would do it again, the fruit is outstanding and to eat a fruit fresh off the vine in December is so satisfying!

so how to determine which zone you are in. i can only find maps of the americas indicating the zones.

if winters get between minus 15 and 20 celcius, are we then in zone 5? or is there more to it...

(by the way, oh hi richie, good to see you here)

Hey joop.

According to English wikipeda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone#Central_Europe_Hardiness_Zones) We (Amsterdam) are in zone 8, but I'm pretty sure when I was reading up on the USDA zones last year, it said we were in zone 7. The reason we are higher than 5 is because we are considered a coastal climate. the science of the USDA climate zones is not very accurate on it's own. It has to be combined with other factors considered. It's more a rule of thumb on what you can grow rather than a set of rules.

(nice to see you here too, see you in the pub Thursday!)

Richie.

Brenda,  by all means give them a try, maybe keep them protected a bit the first winter with your climate?  The hardy oriental kiwi are lovely as they are bite size, you do not have to peel the skin and if like other fruits, valuable nutrition is in the skin.  And they seem to produce prolifically one year and lighter the next.  I would entertain planting more female of this variety to maximize the production in those off years.  I planted two female and one male and I believe you could plant about four female around the male plant spaced  10 feet apart trained on a trellis or pergola.  This is a layperson estimate of what is working for us.
Having vine ripened fruit that deep into fall is worth planting them now for a future bounty and mine have been pretty fool proof since I do not exactly have a green thumb.

For those in zone 7 in Holland, we are within 5 miles of the coast near sea level and have wet cold winters with intermittant freezing and snow and ours are not up against a south wall so yours might thrive. 

I have actinidia kolomikta here in kachemak bay, alaska. the female made fruit the first year it was planted here.  check the wikipedia article on Homer, Ak for the climate here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer,_Alaska