Back to Trellising Kiwis

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When we first arrived at the farm in 2012, we knew we had some Kiwis growing on a small patch of our land. Having not been pruned for years, these had gone "feral" mixing with Wild Rose bushes, Wild Grapes and a variety of saplings, from Sumac to Mulberry.

Almost 2 years ago now we decided to attempt to tame these plants and enjoy their fruits. We experimented with pruning and trellises. We effectively tackled two rows of plants with about a dozen rows having been identified in the brush.

With two growing seasons under our belts, we now have a better handle on what we did right and what could have been improved. So this year we decided to at least free up another two rows... if not more. So along with our other tasks on the farm, we have been dedicating every morning to the Kiwis.

The objective is to have clean rows of trellised and pruned Kiwis from what is now effectively thick bush.

The objective is to get this.....

....from this!

The most tedious task is to free the Kiwi vines from the other feral plants, as well as from themselves. The Kiwi vines will grow upwards of 15 feet per year and will rapidly create an entangled mess.

Based on our past experience, we've learned that the best way to tackle this mess is to start from the bottom. It's almost like giving a hair cut to something that looks like Cousin It! We were somewhat shy to do too much cutting the first year; we now know that we can be quite aggressive with these plants. In fact, once on trellises, the vines can be pruned twice a year.

Based on out first row of trellises we've also learned that bringing a "bush" down to two mature vines will ensure fruit production for the following year. Since our trellises run from North to South, we send one vine North and the other South on one of our lines.

How we prune this mess has also come down to an art. There is very little and next to no information on how to prune "feral" Kiwis. So we have developed our own method.

We cut back each vine in a piecemeal manner, working our way up the vine and cutting at each junction. The objective is to get a healthy vine with at least two years of growth that has its start close to the original "trunk".

Working our way to two vines.

The whole process is daunting at first. In fact it can be quite confusing. What is important to note is that the diameter of the vine is not at all indicative of the age of the vine. Some vines will start to be one size and eventually split with a larger diameter the following year.

The most important thing to note is the colour of the wood. New vines will be light brown. In subsequent years, they will turn dark brown then grey. The much older portion of the vine will look dead with the outer bark flaking away. You should not be fooled by this as they will be very much alive. The vines that are actually dead will pull away easily like any other dead wood.

Colour differences with the age of the vine

What looks dead is actually very much alive

The reason we are paying a lot of attention to the age of the vines we prune is to ensure fruit production once we're done. Kiwi flowers and their fruits will occur on third year growth; this correlates to vines that have just become grey.

The final objective: two vines with 3 years of growth, starting close to the main root.

It's easy to see that this clean up of the vines is the most time consuming part of the process. The next step is rather easy: building and setting up the trellises.

Here again, we've learned a few things from our past experience. First, horizontal trellises work very well. They allow you to tame the growth of the vines while making Kiwi fruits easier to find and to harvest.

In fact, while clearing our first row this year, we discovered a lot of fruit still ripening. We would never have been able to find them in their current state. This time of year, the fruits are slightly wrinkled and really at their best (they make for a great sweet snack while working on them).

They wont last much longer, but the Kiwis are at their best this time of year.

When it comes to the trellises, we've adopted pretty much the same methods we used in our first attempt. We start with 10 ft. 4x4 wood posts and 5 ft. 2x4 cross bars.

We found that the best way to mount the cross bars on the main post is to cut the 4x4 down 2 inches and to chisel away the width of the 2x4 (creating an L-shaped groove).

Chiseling away the end of a 4x4 post

We then prepare to mount the cross bars by drilling together the 4x4 and the 2x4 with two holes, one for a 3/8" mounting bolt and the other a 1/8" guide hole for a cable. both are 1" from the edge of the cross bar.

Drilling away at the guiding wholes for both center cable and mounting bolt

We are not very accurate in this process and we really do not need to be. Once the holes are drilled, the cross bar and post are permanently matched.

The last step to prepare our trellis is to drill the other cable guide holes in the cross bar. These are one foot apart and in the center of the bar, resulting in a total of 5 cable holes.  

It's now time to install the trellis. Technically the posts should be 15 feet apart and so should the vines. We basically have to make due with what has been planted. Although the rows seem to be 15 feet apart, this is definitely not the case between the vines of each row. We have some that are much closer together; we also have some rows with gaping holes.

Since we are not prepared to uproot a well established vine, we've decided to work around this when positioning our trellises. We've also discovered a significant amount of new vines. It seems that the Kiwis have self propagated in many places. They do this almost like a Grape vine would. This provides us with new vines to transplant where we have gaps in our rows.

Small field of new growth ready for transplant

To install the post, we use an auger and drill roughly 3 feet. We are quite lucky to have sandy soil devoid of rocks. It is still however a pretty arduous task.

Drilling a post hole

The depth of the hole ensures that our posts will be 7 feet above the ground. The exact height is again not that important. Our plot of land is not level. The Kiwi plot is a hilly outpost nestled between a creek and our "beaver pond". Since the cables we use are easy to work with, we can accommodate the variations in grade.

The posts are simply dropped into the hole and back-filled with sand. We find that they hold quite well based on our first installation.

The last step is to mount the cross bars and install the cabling. The cables we use are made of a Polyamide resin. We find this to be much easier to work with than metal. In fact, we've adopted this material for all of our trellising needs around the farm.  It maintains tension very well, regardless of temperature and it is very easy to install.

To obtain tension on the lines, we did change a few things. First, we drilled our end post 1 foot below the top to install an eye bolt. On the ground, we installed a 24 inch trellis anchor at a distance equivalent to the height of the eye bolt (giving us a 45 degree angle on the main tension cable). We used standard trellis gripples and tensioning cables to complete the installation at the two end posts.

End post tension cable

In order to tension the Polyamide cables on the cross bars, our first installations used a wire vice grip. These had to be installed on the end post cross bars with specially drilled holes and proved to be not entirely reliable.

Original vice grip installation

This year, we decided to adopt a cheaper, easier concept: simple tension gripples. Perhaps not as "neat", using these small devices provides a lot more flexibility at almost half the price.

New end post tensioning gripples

Although we are now facing huge piles of cuttings, the end result is something we can be proud of. We know next year that these Kiwi vines will not only provide fruits but that these will also be accessible.

One cleaned out row leaves a mess of cuttings

We'll close this week's blog entry with a quick update on our Growing Dome.

The weather has turned cold and of course we've already had our first snow fall. In the dome, we're actually still harvesting heirloom tomatoes and some plants are still flowering. The Kale is also doing rather well. We're now thinking of planting some cold weather crops to see how they will do over the coming months.

Still producing Tomatoes in our unheated greenhouse dome