A Report from Dave’s Garden
The kiwi plant has fallen, a victim of its own appetite. The raspberries and blueberries rejoice.
Dave Schechter is a veteran journalist whose career includes writing and producing reports from Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Readers have been clamoring for a report on this year’s backyard garden, and we have breaking news concerning the “kiwi plant from hell.”
More accurately, the former “kiwi plant from hell.”
As I write this, most of the plant is debris, being chopped into smaller pieces for disposal.
What happened? How was this plant, which laughed scornfully at efforts to rein in its expansion, finally humbled?
More than 25 years ago, a young man starting out as a horticulturist built a garden box in our back yard, roughly 12 feet wide and 12 feet deep, with a circular path at its center.
Along a nearby fence he planted blackberry canes. Elsewhere in the yard, he put in blueberry bushes, raspberry vines, and, along another fence, female and male kiwi plants.
The kiwi plant went forth and multiplied.
I say without exaggeration that had it never been trimmed, the kiwi vines would have reached across the roof of our house.
A decade or so ago, as the couple across the street went their separate ways, and a dear friend moved away, she said we could take their basketball hoop — the kind with a base that you fill with water to anchor it in place.
At that time, the kiwi plant was a manageable size, separated from the driveway by a fence, so we placed the basketball hoop in front of that fence.
At some point, we noticed that the vines were extending over the backboard and wrapping themselves around the metal stanchion.
A smarter person would have taken clippers and dealt with the issue there and then.
After a while, we no longer could play basketball, as the vines obscured the backboard and attached themselves to the rim.
In time, we noticed that the basketball hoop was tilting, as the kiwi plant tugged one side of the base a few inches off the ground.
It became a curiosity for visitors. Here was this enormous kiwi plant, which on one side of a fence shaded and stunted the growth of the raspberries and on the other side was consuming a basketball hoop.
We joked that one of these days the plant would pull the basketball hoop all the way over.
I trimmed the vines, enough to keep them away from the deck and cars parked along the fence, but the kiwi relentlessly tightened its grip on the stanchion, backboard, and rim.
Then, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 15, as I walked up the driveway after collecting the mail, I heard what sounded like a loud “whoosh.”
When I reached the carport, I found the formerly vertical basketball hoop lying horizontal on the ground. The force of its fall had dragged most of the massive plant to the ground, even tearing away some of the thicker vines extending from the roots.
Dumbfounded, I texted pictures to the family and then set to work. For two hours that afternoon and several more the next day, I clipped and cut, using four different clippers, until most of the damaged vines and limbs had been cut away, carpeting a section of the driveway.
In the downed vines, I found two weather-beaten soccer balls that our boys had kicked into the plant and never retrieved.
The roots of the plant appear to have survived, but without most of its offspring.
The downed and damaged basketball hoop likely will be discarded.
The raspberry vines were thrilled, because now they would receive direct sunlight. Hopefully, their usually meager crop will increase this season.
The adjacent blueberry bushes were pleased because no longer would kiwi vines reach over the raspberries and attempt to infiltrate.
As for the rest of the garden, the blackberry canes are showing the first signs of fruit.
We were late planting this year, but in the garden box we now have two or three varieties of tomatoes, along with basil, a couple of different peppers, dill, and eggplant. The rosemary plant that survives no matter the weather occupies one corner. We need more marigolds to help retard garden pests.
The branches of a plum tree we were gifted a few years ago soon will bow from the weight of their fruit. A few green bean plants are holding their own along a short length of fence and at the back of the driveway the elephant ears are waving in the breeze.
But the “kiwi plant from hell” is no longer haughty, no longer growing unimpeded. It fell victim to its own appetite, taken down by the basketball hoop that it tried to swallow.
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