My Kiwai is fruiting!!!

I'm jealous, I've had one for 7 years, never had a flower, but you can't expect much living in Rotherham I suppose!!! Well done Bertie!

Mines fruiting here too in Monmouthshire : )

Congratulations! Kiwi vines don't like frost, although my father, in NZ, had kiwis growing in the back yard in a part of the country that does have frosts, but not really hard ones, and they fruited. So, they can be grown in a UK climate, but they do prefer a really sunny climate, and a lack of hard winters, which is why, in NZ, they're grown in places like Opotiki, in the Bay of Plenty, in a sunny, frost free zone.

Oh, another point re kiwis: there are male and female plants. So, without a his and hers pair, there won't be fruit. That might explain Dido's lack of flowers. And fruit.

The point I was trying to make was that this is Actinidia arguta (kiwai) rather than Actinidia chinensis (or deliciosa) ( kiwi.) It may be much easier than the kiwi, though I will have to see how the fruit develop and what they taste like compared to the real thing.

Never count your chickens before they are hatched! Today I went to check the plant and found ALL the little fruit, about half a centimetre in size have fallen off the plant on to the soil.
They should grow to around 3 cm or more before ripening so I wonder why this could be.
1. The plant is growing very strongly this year and making some good new shoots.
2. I've been watering it far more than last year and I wonder if I've overwatered, although it is planted in a kind of 'pot' made from concrete blocks, standing on soil, but with no base, so it is free to drain.
3. Could it be the fruit are not properly pollinated? We opened up the tiny fruit and they seem to have seeds inside so that might not be the case.
4. Could it be the plant isn't ready to ripen fully developed fruit yet. The fruit were all on the older parts of the plant, probably last year's wood.
Unless anybody else has any ideas, I will just have to wait until next year and see what happens then.

July 31st. Just discovered there remains ONE fruit on my Kiwai which is growing slowly larger, so there must be nothing intrinsically wrong with the plant in terms of being autofertile.
I've also discovered that the chickens are jumping in and out of the planter where it's positioned and scratching, so this doesn't do it much good. They might even be the culprits for why all the small fruits had fallen off. I can just see the chickens pecking them off and then spitting them out as they were too hard and unripe.
Does anyone have any recipes for chickens cooked in kiwi fruit juice?

October: I discovered the single fruit that was left had fallen from the vine, but was only the size of a pea. It was squishy so I didn't taste it!
The layered cuttings don't seem to have rooted yet, but I will leave them in place until the end of the winter to see if that works.
I will keep hoping for some decent fruit in 2011.