Thursday November 09, 2006 Home Grown Kiwi Fruit
|
Last weekend, Duncan and I harvested the kiwi fruit on our vines behind the swimming pool. |
These kiwis have been a bit of a hit-n-miss affair so far. We've been in our current home for just over three years. The first year, there was a bumper crop. I googled around trying to find out when to pick them and, at that time, found nothing. We picked in November that year but didn't know how to turn the rock hard fruit (full of starch) into juicy fruit (full of sugar). We gave away a lot of the fruit but we still wasted many.
Last year we hardly got any fruit, and the squirrels got most of that anyhow.
This year, as you can see from the image above, we've collected another large crop. And that's just from the ones I can get to. I was up the step ladder pruning away like crazy, and reaching right in, and I still reckon there is about the same amount of fruit on the vine that I can't reach. What I really need are some trained squirrels, but I bet they'd keep all the fruit for themselves.
This time, I did find a web page that tells me all about kiwis. I lucked out and picked them at the right time. I now know how to turn them from the little bullets that they currently are, into delectable fruit.
I also really need to go in there and drastically prune back the domineering male vine so the female one can thrive and get fully pollenated next year (yes, I'm learning way more than I really wanted to).
I'll have to wait until the garden recycle bins are empty again before I have another prunefest though.
( Nov 09 2006, 09:24:18 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [4]
Comments are closed for this entry.
![[ Registered ]](http://www.diarist.net/registry/button.gif ){kind=small}
Posted by catherine on November 09, 2006 at 02:25 PM PST #
Posted by Simon Anderson on November 09, 2006 at 05:57 PM PST #
Posted by Jeremy on November 14, 2006 at 11:56 AM PST #
Posted by Jeremy on November 14, 2006 at 11:59 AM PST #