Muscadines!

Muscadines Before

Muscadines After

I found the muscadines growing on the NW corner of the property and they were all the way up to the tops of the trees surrounding their little clearing. I learned from the neighbor that they're twenty year old vines. Red muscadines on the West(Left), white on the East(Right). The white ones are definitely Carlos Bronze, which are used mostly for juice, or wine. Not sure about the red. They were originally trellised on wooden 4x4s cemented into the ground. Two sets of three posts each, at ten foot intervals. 5 lines of plastic coated metal clothesline were strung between each post. After twenty years, most of the bottoms of the posts were rotting at the line where they met the concrete.

First, I cut all of the vines higher than 6 feet or so off of the ground so that I could pull everything out of the trees. It was a true workout, and took hours, but it was actually fun. I felt like Tarzan by the end. I just made brush piles of it, everywhere around the clearing, about 30' x 30'. After that I had to make real decisions about which vines to keep and which to prune away with the hand pruners. They were extremely overgrown so there was plenty to work with. I just picked the ones I wanted and aimed for a 4 arm kniffen style trellis. Once they were pruned back I removed the old wires, kicked over the old posts and removed them. I actually laid them out around a portion of the nearby clearing where I am going to allow wild blackberries to continue to take over. Everything outside the 12'x12' is trimmed down. Then I pounded 6' construction stakes next to the poured concrete and recycled the clothesline, but chose only two lines, instead of the previous five, for the 4 arm kniffen. It allows more light into the muscadines, and will be plenty for my needs. I had previously worked on them for about 5 hours, but this day I started at dawn and left about an hour before dusk. It was a major renovation, but shouldn't be so brutal in the coming years. I think at least two of the four of each variety should be productive, the others looked pretty woody and may not be worth saving. I could replace those four vines and have two sets of four set twenty years apart. But lets just see what they do this year the way they are now.

One Red Vine