James Corban

They are very aggressive growers, and provide a lot of shade.

Can anyone tell me what might be going on with my FUZZY kiwi ?
I'm in zone 7b-8a and some of my kiwi are getting wrinkled , soft, and starting to ferment on the vines (before fully ripe ).  

Some of the ones that are wrinkled are still a bit crisp in the center and have 10-12% sugar.
Its hard to tell which ones will be easy to spoon out from others are soft on the outside and crisp  (not quite ripe ) in the center.  

Are the vines trying to drop fruit they cant support ?

I've increased the watering frequency to twice a day now.  

I have a few vines that have large firm kiwi on them still, I just dont know when is the right time to pick them.

Thank you very much

Thanks for the kind comments !  I'm really enjoying growing these.    

They had flower buds last year ( at 2yrs old )  but a late frost killed them.   I might have gone a little overboard on the amount I spent to protect them from the frost this year, but this has been a fun experiment for me and I'll get to use the plastic over and over.    I'm in zone 7B-8A.

These are not the cold hardy kiwi.   I think they are Actinidia chinensis.   8B should be perfect for the fuzzy kiwi !  

I know growing from the seeds may get something different than the parent so we'll have to see .   :)      I dont know which ones are male and which ones are female yet.   I'm hoping that I get fruit this year.  It looks like there may be thousands of flower buds on the vines and not all of the leaf buds are open.     If I get fruit this year, I'll try to root some cuttings of the best ones.  

A propane heater and heatlamp inside the tent kept them safe through many hours of low 20s.  

Today I noticed flower buds.  The Kiwi vines are 3 Years old.

I've added some greenhouse plastic over my new kiwi buds.
Its supposed to be under freezing for 12+ hours tomorrow with most of those hours in the 20s.

I'm adding a propane heater also to raise the temperature in there.

I'm northeast of Atlanta and I've got 48 fuzzy kiwi that have done just fine through the last couple winters.   About 40 of the vines I've put mulch and piled up leaves around the base to protect the root crown.  The others I just left out with minimal protection to see how they would do on their own ( no mulch or leaves ) .    They've all done fine.     At the beginning of this year I had my first flowers, but a couple late frosts destroyed all the buds.   I'll try wrapping them with blankets or something this next year.  

The other option to protect from a late frost is I've got a lot of rocks that I might stack around the Kiwi Trellis.   Hopefully the rocks will absorb heat during the day and slowly release it at night.    

I made these.  
There is about 6 feet of clearance, but I wish they were a *little* taller.

Is it possible to trigger flowering after a late frost ?

I had my first Golden Fuzzy Kiwi flower buds this year, but they all got clobbered by a late frost.  

I live near Atlanta (east )
I started with 100 germinated seeds and now have 40 planted in the yard on trellises.  

My Kiwi - 2019