[4/25] We held our first work session for the 2026 fiscal year!

Hello! This is the Okuma Kiwi Regeneration Club 🥝
The new fiscal year has started, and the Regeneration Club's activities for this year have finally begun in earnest 🌸
This time, we carried out bud thinning work!

This year's aspirations and goals: Aiming for a high-quality kiwi harvest

Before starting the work, we all shared the Regeneration Club's policies and aspirations for this fiscal year.
Last year, we had the reflection that 'we harvested a lot, but the fruit was a little small.' Therefore, this year, we will be even more particular about our cultivation methods to harvest higher-quality, larger kiwis!

Furthermore, this year is also the year we will finally see our first harvest at the 'ReFruits' field, which started as a new kiwi farm sparked by the Regeneration Club's activities. To revitalize the town and agriculture with kiwis at the center, it is important that more people can get involved in cultivation at ReFruits and that we steadily increase the harvest volume. Therefore, we will operate each work session with the goal of increasing the number of people within the Regeneration Club who possess solid cultivation techniques✨

In particular, April, May, and June are the most important periods that determine the 'quantity' and 'size' of the kiwis we will harvest in the autumn. We confirmed together that it is important to carry out work such as bud thinning and fruit thinning thoroughly during this time, and we headed to the field with great enthusiasm.

The rules for 'bud thinning,' an important task that determines the fate of the kiwi

We moved to the first field and immediately started the bud thinning work.
When spring comes, kiwis produce as many as 6 to 7 buds on a single branch, but we eventually reduce that to 4. There are mainly three rules for how to do this thinning.

① The guideline for the number of buds to leave is '1 bud for every 7 leaves'
Nutrients from the leaves are essential for making kiwi fruit larger. As a guideline, the image is that one fruit is produced for every 7 leaves. Where there are few leaves, we intentionally reduce the number of buds, and for branches that have no leaves at all and only small buds, we harden our hearts and remove them all.

② Prioritize removing buds at the tip and base of the branch
This is because fruit attached to the tip or base is prone to deformity.
Regarding the tip, kiwis have a characteristic called 'apical dominance,' where they try to prioritize the growth of the tip of the branch, and growth hormones gather at the tip. While this energy is good for the growth of branches and leaves, it increases the possibility of excessive cell division regarding flower formation. As a result, it seems they are prone to becoming flat, deformed fruit or huge, twin-like deformed fruit.

③ Remove small flowers
The small buds attached to the side of the large buds like Mickey Mouse ears are called small flowers, and we carefully remove all of these as well.

Note that at the time of the final harvest, we adjust the number of fruits taken from one bud to an average of 2.5, but we leave 4 at this point as 'insurance' in case any trouble occurs during the pollination-flowering-fruiting process. And if nothing happens, we thin them out further during the 'fruit thinning' work after pollination ✍️
Also, for the main branches that form the skeleton of the tree, we want to keep extending the branches without taking fruit, so we remove every single bud attached to the branches.
It is a moment where you feel the depth of farm work, where humans add their hands while understanding the mechanisms of nature 😊

Patience-testing manual labor and the success of reliable participating members

In the bud thinning work, we work in groups of 4 along the trunk and proceed carefully.
However... no matter how much we take, it doesn't seem to end. Faced with a massive amount of buds, I keenly felt that the upcoming pollination and fruit thinning would be a series of equally daunting tasks.

However, we steadily proceeded with the bud thinning, and the parts scheduled for that day in the first and second fields were completed! Furthermore, the fertilizer application at the Kiwi Country, which we did a little bit after the work session, was finished in the blink of an eye in about 15 to 20 minutes thanks to the large number of people. The power of people is truly great 🙌

Work in the second field and the next checkpoint

The second field, where we worked in the second half, is a 4-year-old field. Although the area is larger than the first field, the trees are still young.
Last year, various circumstances overlapped and we could not harvest, but this year we aim to take advantage of this large area to harvest more kiwis!

At the end, we were given a summary of this work session and a lecture on the checkpoints for when we come next time.
The points to look at when you come to the field next time are,how much the main branches have grown.
I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of growth the trees will show next time!

The next work session is on 5/16 (Sat)!

Next time, we will perform fruit thinning for the red kiwi 'Kouhi' and pollination for the green kiwi 'Hayward'.
As I wrote a little at the beginning, the pollination and fruit thinning performed in May and June are important tasks that greatly affect the amount that can be harvested this autumn and take time, so on this day, we will start the work session from 10:00 AM!
However, participation from the middle or participation until the middle is also very welcome!

Also, the following is the work session schedule for this fiscal year!
May and June, when we perform pollination and fruit thinning, and December to February, when we perform pruning, will be work from the morning until the evening!

We will announce the details of each working group meeting via our official LINE account as the dates approach, so please stay tuned!