Category: Muscadines

Pruning Neglected Muscadines

12/27/2018

What a tangled rats nest...This is what you get when you don’t prun for a few years. Amazingly, the seven muscadines I planted along my back fence have survived my lack of care, and even produced several quarts of grapes this summer! Unfortunately for me, my decision to put of pruning them has come back to bite me. I thought the job would take me an hour or so, but I spent at least two hours yesterday pruning just two of the seven.

If I had been smart, I would have done at least a cursory clean up of the vines, and followed the Isons long-cane method - Instead I was lazy and gave myself a complicated chore. Since I hadn’t been selecting the strongest canes and shaping the vines, I’ve wound up with some strange crooks, bends, and loops. While this shouldn’t affect production, these weird shapes will serve as an enduring reminder to prune every winter or else. I also retensioned the guide wires between the posts, and cut back some of the trumpet vine that is trying to take over from the other side of the fence.

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Jujubes, Muscadines, and Greenhouse Irrigation

7/29/2012

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Sugarcane Jujube

My jujubes grew like crazy this year, and even put on a few fruit. The Sugarcane was far and away the most vigorous growing. The little fruit I did get wasn't all that good, and before you say anything, I even picked them early in the morning. For those of you who aren't familiar with this advice, one often reads that jujubes should be picked early in the morning when they are at their juiciest. Jujubes picked in the afternoon will be dry and pithy. Mine were dry and pithy even in the morning. I really want to like jujubes, but so far I'm not impressed with the fruit, at least not for fresh eating. I want to grow fruit my kids can pick and eat, not fruit that I have to cook with added sugar in order to make it palatable. That being said, any fruit tree that can grow from one to 7.5 feet in 18 months deserves some consideration, so I'm going to give jujubes another year or two.

I've also started picking and eating my Florida Fry muscadines off of the play fort this week. These are some exceptionally delicious grapes. Not only are they huge, but the flavor is amazing. They have thick skins, four to five seeds each, and are bursting with juice. I don't eat the skins, but I guess they could be called 'technically edible'. They're definitely worth eating, even though there's a fair amount of spitting involved. The Florida Fry muscadines are big and green, with a slight bronze sheen. The Supreme and Darlene grapevines I planted didn't put on any fruit this year, but they've grown like crazy, almost completely covering the play fort. I hope to be able to compare all three side by side next year.

This weekend I finally was able to finish rigging up the irrigation system inside the greenhouse. It actually was pretty easy, once I finally had all the pieces. Earlier this year I ran a 3/4-inch PVC water line to the greenhouse. I put together a PVC manifold, and rigged up some inline sprinkler valves, and then attached DIG drip irrigation hose. I wired all the valves to a programmable timer, so now all my tropicals will get watered every day without me having to drag hoses around. I'm really getting spoiled to not having to water plants by hand anymore. If the electronic timer works out, I may have to fully automate all of my irrigation lines.

Sugarcane Jujube March 2011

Sugarcane Jujube July 2012

Honey Jar Jujube

Cluster of Florida Fry Muscadines

These grapes are BIG!

Greenhouse irrigation manifold.

Pineapples in their new home with drip irrigation.

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Grapes on the Play Fort

6/17/2012

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Kid's Play Fort

For a long time I said that once we built the kids a play fort, I was going to plant grapevine at the base and train them up over the structure. I thought it would be great for my boys to be able to pick and eat grapes while they were up there playing. Initially Dr. Wife poo-pooed the idea, saying that it would turn into a big mess and look terrible, but I think she's come around now. We built the play fort this winter, and as soon as it was finished I began plotting and planning.

I decided to plant three colors of muscadines: Supreme (black), Florida Fry (bronze), and Darlene (red). Special thanks to Danny Gabb for the Supreme and the Florida Fry. I ordered the Darlene muscadine from Ison's in Georgia. They've got everything muscadine at Ison's, and I recommend them highly. I also order strawberry plants from them every year, and have ordered fruit trees from them also. I planted the vines at the base of the corner posts, and have been training them to the structure using 14-gauge wire recycled from an electric fence. Every time I'm out there with the kids I pinch back any side shoots to encourage the vigorous growing tips to follow the wires.

All of the vines have grown very well, and I fully expect them to reach the ends of the trellis wires by the end of the growing season. I rigged up a drip irrigation system to keep them well watered, and so far the kids haven't been too rough with the vines or the drip lines. This spring, only the Florida Fry flowered and set fruit. Of the varieties I planted, it's also the only self-fertile one. It has around 7 or 8 clusters of grapes, each with 5 to 7 grapes, which I can't wait to ripen so the kids can pick them. If the birds don't find the grapes, I'll be posting a follow-up blog entry in August when they do.

Play Fort = Grape Arbor

Supreme muscadine trained on play fort.

Florida Fry muscadine trained above the slide.

Darlene muscadine climbing up wire by swings.

Cluster of Florida Fry muscadine grapes

Cluster of Florida Fry muscadine grapes.

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Muscadines - Vitis Rotundifolia

5/26/2011

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Huge Cowart Muscadines - 2009

As I mentioned in a previous post, last fall Danny Gabb was kind enough to give me four muscadine grape vines: two Supreme, and two Florida Fry. I already had a Cowart and a Triumph, but I hadn't really done anything with them because I felt I didn't have the room.

I had previously attempted to grow muscadines in cramped areas on the porch and along a small trellis in the back where the blueberries are now. I learned the hard way that muscadines are vigorous climbers, and cannot be contained without regular pruning. They climbed everywhere, up the house siding, in the brick, just everywhere. I had planted them where it was very difficult to mow around them and prune, and I really couldn't keep them under control, so eventually I wound up finding new homes for them and establishing the blackberries and blueberries in their place.

However, even with all the attention they require, muscadines are so delicious that I simply must grow them. One of my earlier mistakes was building a trellis right next to the fence, which made it very difficult to mow and weed around them. My plan this time around is to plant them next to the fence posts, and use the fence itself as a trellis. I'll install a stiff wire along the top of the fence to guide the arms as they grow, and hopefully by next year I'll have a good framework established.

I suspect that at some point the muscadines will attempt to reach out from the fence and grow into adjacent fruit trees, so I'll just have to be diligent in my summer pruning. Of course, it wouldn't be that big of a deal if they did grow into the fruit trees. That's a good example of what permaculturists call "stacking", where one plant supports another, and you can get two crops out of the same space. I also have not-so-secret ambitions to use my kid's future swing-set/play structure as a muscadine trellis. I think it would be great for my kids to be able to pick and eat grapes while they play. Dr. Wife isn't crazy about the idea.

Florida Fry Muscadine

Supreme Muscadine

Immature Supreme Muscadines

Boy #1 gobbling up fresh picked berries.

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Pruning Neglected Muscadines

Jujubes, Muscadines, and Greenhouse Irrigation

Grapes on the Play Fort

Muscadines - Vitis Rotundifolia

Clayton Bell

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