Last year I followed Greg Ison’s method of rapidly growing newly planted muscadines up and down the wire. It is an aggressive fertilizing process but it worked well. I have already started this year off by applying 10-10-10 on April 1st and calcium nitrate about the 15th. This procedure is continued each month. If you use calcium nitrate be careful and follow Gregs method of spreading it out. Hope all the muscadine growers have a good and productive year.
I’ve done similar with blueberry, bunch grapes, and even apple. I’ve got some tiny grapes planted in the greenhouse. Once they take hold I’m going to push them hard with nitrogen and try for a small crop next yr.
In CA I pushed apples really hard on M9 the first yr and harvested 10-20 lbs per tree in the second yr. The quality wasn’t too good with all that nitrogen but I sure had big trees after two yrs.
I was looking over the vines I pushed last year today and they also look like they could produce a pretty good amount (wishful estimate .5 gallon per vine) this year. Greg Ison gave me the confidence to push them without damaging the vine.
I didn’t know enough to push my apples when they were first planted. If I had it to do over they would be grown off much faster.
Very teresting topic, thanks for sharing. I did not use any fertilizer when planted, just steer manure, and in 3 years my Monrovia grapes were needing a structure and growing a hard trunk.
I am interested in learning about muscadines, and how to make any grapes productive. Lucky I guess, I do nothing but prune and have pretty good luck…must be good fertility in soil.
Slightly older topic but a great share. Thank you @Auburn. I was looking for a similar fertilizer strategy to push some young apple trees I plan to try in a small high density tall spindle layout. Any other experiences (positive or negative) from the group using this much fertilizer to push young apple tree growth?
I am wondering if the same results can had by just fertilizing with lime and ammonium nitrate? Any ideas about this?