Kiwi

Plant the kiwi against a sheltered south- or west-facing wall and mulch the root zone thickly with leaves or brushwood in autumn; protect young plants additionally at the shoot base with fleece in the first winters. Move containers somewhere frost-free, cool and bright, and in spring cover the fresh growth with fleece if late frost threatens.

The most reliable ways to propagate kiwis are cuttings or layering; both methods give plants that come true. Cuttings succeed most reliably in early summer from strong, sufficiently woody shoots: cut pencil-thick pieces about 15 cm long with 3 to 4 buds. Insert them two thirds deep into a sandy, airy substrate, keep them warm (around 20 °C), bright but out of strong sun, and keep the substrate evenly moist. After about 6 to 8 weeks roots should have formed; new growth shows you that rooting has worked. Alternatively, in late autumn to early winter you can cut woody shoots as hardwood cuttings, overwinter them cool and insert them in early spring. For layering, during the growing season bend a young shoot close to the ground downwards, lightly nick the underside, cover the middle with soil and weigh it down with a stone. The shoot tip sticks out. After a few months you separate the rooted plant from the mother plant. Alternatively, air layering also works for higher shoots: you wrap a nicked shoot in moist substrate inside a tied-up piece of film. Grafting (whip grafting, budding or cleft grafting) is more laborious in the home garden, but makes sense if you raise seedling rootstocks from kiwi seeds and transfer a proven variety onto them true to type. The seeds serve only for raising the rootstocks, not for propagating varieties, because seedlings do not come true, their sex remains unknown until flowering, and they often need 3 to 10 years to first flower.