SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM ܂ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2018 ܂ 3A
Taking mystery out of kiwi harvest
Gardening
Carol Savonen
Guest columnist
Question: I grow kiwis at home. This
is the first year the female vines have
fruit and I’m so excited. But I realize I
don’t know when to pick them or how to
tell when they are ripe. Help?!
Answer: It can be a little baffling to
know when to harvest kiwifruits in the
fall.
Commercial kiwifruit orchardists use
a tool that measures the amount of sug-
ar in a fruit, called a refractometer.
When the sugar in the fruit reaches a
certain level, they harvest the fruit for
market. Since these tools cost about
$150, most home gardeners don’t have
one.
Here are some guidelines for the tim-
ing of harvest of both hardy and fuzzy
kiwifruits without the use of fancy
equipment, from Growing Kiwifruit,
OSU Extension’s publication, available
online: https://catalog.extension.ore-
gonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/pro-
ject/pdf/pnw507.pdf
Hardy Kiwifruit
These grape-sized fruits develop the
best flavor if they are vine-ripened, but
they don’t store well this way. To be able
to store them, pick the fruit while still
hard, store them in the refrigerator, and
then bring them to room temperature to
ripen.
To determine when to pick hardy ki-
wifruits, cut open a fruit. If the seeds are
black, the fruit is ready to be picked. In
the Willamette Valley, fruit are usually
ready to be harvested in mid-Septem-
ber. At this stage, they will still be hard
and green. Hardy kiwifruits will tolerate
light frost.
Store hardy kiwifruit in vented plas-
tic bags in the refrigerator for up to 2
months. To ripen them, take them out of
the fridge and place them in a vented
plastic bag with a banana or apple. Keep
them at room temperature until they are
soft, hence ripe.
They can be left on the vine to ripen.
Most varieties will develop a red blush
on the skin surface when they vine rip-
en. Once they are soft, however, they
will not last long in the fridge. So if you
want a sustained supply of ripe kiwis, it
Hayward kiwifruit is sorted at Venida Packing Company in Exeter, Calif. The company was the first packing house to
commercially pack Hayward kiwifruit in North America in the late 1970s. PHOTOS BY USA TODAY NETWORK
might be best to pick most of them early,
then bring them out from the fridge in
small batches to ripen them.
Fuzzy Kiwifruit
These larger, fuzzier cousins of the
hardy kiwifruit do not ripen on the vine
in Oregon. Leave them on the vine as
long as possible for the fruit to be phys-
iologically ready to ripen off the vine. As
with hardy kiwis, the seeds need to be
black, which normally happens around
early November, depending on the sea-
son.
Fuzzy kiwifruit vines will tolerate
light frost but harvest your fruit before a
hard freeze occurs. Store and ripen
fuzzy kiwis the same way as with the
hardy—in the refrigerator or cold ga-
rage. The difference is, fuzzy kiwifruits
will keep in a cold environment for
about 4 to 6 months, depending on the
temperature of the fridge.
A few more hints for successful har-
vesting and storage of both types of ki-
wifruit include:
܂ Handle kiwifruit with care, as they
bruise easily. Damaged fruit does not
store well.
܂ Chill fruit as quickly as possible af-
ter picking them. The colder the temper-
ature, the longer they keep. Kiwifruits
store better at high humidity.
܂ Avoid exposing stored kiwifruit to
other ripening fruit, which gives off eth-
ylene gas, a plant hormone that hastens
the ripening process.
FOR A N
L
L
E
A
F
W
KU
Six Marion students
graduate from Oregon
Connections Academy
Kiwifruit doubles sit for sale at farmers market. The fuzzy brown, egg-looking
fruit with bright green flesh is named for its resemblance to the kiwi, New
Zealand’s national bird.
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