Growing Hardy Kiwi Fruit: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

 See how the top flowers have a little ring of purplish stamens around a big pistil and starburst white stigma? The stigma is the pollen-receiving tip of the pistil. And the ovary is that greenish ovoid thing that, on the older flowers lower in the picture that have dropped their petals, is SWELLING into a FRUIT. That I plan to EAT and feed to my FAMILY.

So today I went looking for the staminate, or male flowers, knowing there had to be some on one vine or another, and by gum I found some on one of the two smaller vines. Not that I can tell which vine is which anymore. No pistil, no ovary, just a nice ring of purple stamens. Pollen dispensers. Male flowers.

Through pure, dumb luck, one of the three seeds I planted eight years ago had been a male. And bees had visited these staminate flowers, and brought their pollen to the pistillate flowers on the one or two huge female vines. It was as if I’d planned it. What if all three had been male? Or all three female? It would take eight years before I’d know if I’d goofed. All spring I’ve been thinking of trying to find someone in the area patient or (probably) dumb enough to try growing hardy kiwi, to ask if I could cut a sprig of male flowers to bring home. I was thinking about driving through Devola, looking for that backyard arbor. If the homeowner is even still living there. If he hasn’t gone into a deep depression about giving over his backyard arbor to fruitless massvines, and gone into seclusion.

I didn’t have to hunt anyone down in the end. The Kiwi Fairy visited Indigo Hill. I cannot believe my luck. I know I’m putting the cart before the horse. Nobody’s actually eaten any hardy kiwi fruit here. Maybe the coons and flying squirrels will get them all. I don’t know how long they take to mature. Can’t be eight years. Has to be measured in weeks or months.

The hummock of green to the left of the leftmost rose is the male plant. That plant that has climbed all the way up the deck? That’s the female. They bloomed simultaneously. Bees found their way from the one sprig of male flowers to a kazillion female flowers. And she’s LOADED. This is almost too much miracle for me to comprehend. I love miracles. Especially ones that take eight years to come true, and by all odds really shouldn’t.

Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com