Spring is in the air, the last frost has come and gone, birds are singing, and the sun is shining a little longer each day. I started my seedlings a little earlier this year after learning that the growing season here is shorter than where I use to live. Which works out perfectly because now everything is out in my small greenhouse and some plants have already fruited. That give me a little extra time to work on some harder to grow plants that I have been wanting for some time, one of which being kiwis.

I did have plans to buy an actual kiwi plant this year but in light of some recent and unfortunate events going on in the world today I can’t. So instead I decided to grow my own from seeds. It all started when we got a grocery delivery that had organic kiwis in it. They weren’t ripe yet so I sat them in refrigerator and while I waited I hatched my plan to grow the kiwis from seeds. At first it didn’t go over so well but now I have little kiwi plants and here is how I got there.

Week One – Two

I clean the seeds out of the kiwi plant and washed them using a fine tea strainer. The seeds are really small and it was the only strainer they wont fall threw. Afterwards I placed them in a folded napkin and put them in a glass dish next to the fire place. Kiwis like being warm as do most seeds that are trying to sprout. I always put my seeds next to the fire place to sprout, but this actually didn’t work because kiwis like to warmer than your average seedlings. This is because they are tropical in fact the like it hot 114°F.

Week Three and Four

Needless to say the fireplace wasn’t hot enough to sprout the seeds. I even tried putting a small jar upside down on top of them to trap in heat. Nothing worked until one day.. one day after the baby had a bath he was really cold. I turned on the fireplace to help in warm and a few days later we had sproutlings!

Week Five and Six

I let the sprouts stay in the paper towels next to fire place to stay warm and grow stronger. I turn the fireplace every morning for 10 to 15 minutes to heat up the jar I had them in. Once they started to grow leaves I took the top piece of paper towel off and let them grow small leaves. Keeping them away from sunlight. Plants don’t need sunlight until their leaves turn green and since the roots were exposed it was better to keep them away from sunlight and the grow lights I have for the other plants.

Week Seven and Eight

The leaves finally turned green and little sprouts need sun and nutrients by this time. I moved them to a soil pot with a dome top next to the window in the kitchen. The kitchen is always warm and the window get most of the days sun. When moving plants this young it important to be very careful. They are very delicate and can be damaged and stressed very easily. I removed the top layer of paper towel that the sprouts were on and place them on the paper towel on top of the dirt and sprinkled very little dirt on top. This way I wouldn’t hurt the small roots and they could slowly get use to the dirt. I left them like this for two weeks.

Week Nine and Thirteen

I started to notice that the roots started to grow into the paper towel and that meant the plants wanted to grow into the dirt. I very carefully removed what plants I could from the paper towel and gently barried their roots shallowly into the dirt and water them. For the plants I couldn’t remove from the paper towel I barried them just enough to cover the roots along with the paper towel. Some of them were still in cluster because they were to young to try and separate.

Week Fifth Or Eighteen

I waited a little while for the plants to get strong roots and then transplanted planted them into large pots. I tried to get all of the paper towel pieces off. At this point the plants were fine and just needed to grow which takes a long time. When they got bigger I moved them to bigger pots. If you are trying this kept in mine that kiwis don’t really like being transplanted so be careful or prepared for growing to take even. Longer.