I think it’s enough to plant one tree. Only one trunk is cultivated. All the lateral buds below the scaffold surface are removed. After the scaffold surface is put on, only three leaves are left for each lateral bud, which can grow 20 feet a year. The next year, the whole pavilion was covered with green leaves.
@dimitri_7a, just do a search for 4x4 deck brackets. You will find that there are many ways to attach it.
Well we just finished the pergola! Decided to cover the entire deck versus just doing one corner. Lane has put on 1.5 ft of growth so far and I am going to start pruning it to 1-2 leaf on the side shoots to focus growth to go up on the advice of @Auburn. Black Beauty got replaced and is just starting to put on new growth. Hoping they will get to the top of the pergola by next year.
Looks great.
What is the area dimensions on top of your pergola? I am guessing the it is about 12’x12’.
I have a pergola (well it is more of an arbor then a pergola but that is just semantics) that is 24’x12’. At one time it had seven relatively vigorous grapevines on it which was really about three too many. They did alright until Pierce’s Disease took out six of them. Now it has just one Concord vine right in the middle of it. The one vine now covers about an area of 16’x12’. I guess the point that I am trying to make is that I believe that most folks (myself included) will underestimate the area that one vine will cover on a pergola. The vines always seem to want to run off of it. I usually just let the vines hang off of the side.
I agree with Auburn that pruning is going to be more difficult. Also, harvesting is going to be difficult. The good news is that you will not be spraying because they are muscadines. Enjoy your pergola!
Close, 12x10’.
Glad you told me two is probably enough, I was briefly considering adding another.
I do realize pruning will be more annoying - fortunately I am comfortable with heights and the second story window lets me climb on top of the pergola. 
Yeah the reason I was limited to muscadines is because I didn’t want to spray anything above my head.
Did you paint your pergola? I’m guessing that you used something cedar. You probably got something around $500 in it if you built it yourself. Pergolas are expensive when you hire a company that builds them. Fellow up the road from me paid $5000 (if I remember correctly) to have an outfit to built one in his backyard. His is really fancy though. Difference is that he is in a subdivision and I am out in the sticks. My pergola is kind of rustic appearing. But back when I had 7 vines on it pretty much only the grapevines could be seen from a distance.
I painted mine after I built it. Probably would have been easier if I had just painted the individual boards before actually building. Its now looking like it could use another painting after 9 years.
Watch out for the carpenter bees. You may want to build you some traps. Well, maybe not.
Its pressure treated pine painted with an acrylic based deck stain / paint - cedar around here is absurdly expensive. I’ve had this type of paint last for 3 years without fading or cracking in low traffic areas.
Yeah, total cost of materials was about $500 but I also also added a bunch of tools to the budget: miter saw, driver, extra set of batteries, etc. With tools the total cost was probably closer to $1k. Still better than the $2-3k quotes I got for it - and I can reuse the tools for other projects or resell them close to their original value. This is actually my first wood working project of this size, before this the only thing I have done is build a couple raised beds.
Funny that you mention that, during the demolition step of removing the old corner posts I took out a board that I knew had carpenter bees in them (saw them flying around and the saw dust on the ground). From the outside all that you could see was a 1/2" hole, on the inside there was a tunnel network that made made the whole 1ft long 2x10" board swiss cheese.
So both the muscadines have reached the top of my 12’ x 10’ pergola.
But I’m not really sure how to train them now and I haven’t found any guides - searching for “muscadine pergola” this thread comes up as the #1 result, haha.
Seems like normal wire-trellis pruning is pretty straightforward: grow out two cordon arms and then do yearly spur pruning, spacing the spurs 6 to 8" apart down the arm
So if I just need to decide how to grow out the arms on top of the pergola, which of these options seems the best:
OPTION A
OPTION B
OPTION C
Well , based on my experience with my grape arbor I would be trying to keep the cordons away from the edges as much as possible (being specific I do not like option C).
Trying to figure out drawing a diagram for you.
Just open it up in Paint and draw over top with a different color, I don’t need anything fancy.
I was thinking the same thing, and leaning toward option B. Feels like with option C I would have a lot of growth i need to prune back as it tumbles over the edge.
Okay, first time I have ever used paint!
Anyway, this is an idea that I had. One cordon per plant. The blue line represents the cordon. The purple represents shoots off of the cordon. Of course the shoots would have the leaves and berries.
last year on my Cowart vine I pruned the shoots to 2 or 3 nodes. This year except for pruning back the length of the vine beyond what I want to be my permanent cordon, I have not done anything to the shoots. This is on a regular trellis rather an arbor.
The growth habits of muscadines vines compared to bunchgrape vines sure seem different to me. Maybe the muscadines vines will not run off of arbore/pergolas as frequent as bunchgrapes.
You probably do not want a lot of overhang off
the sides of your pergola.
The problem I had with running the cordons along the edge of of my arbor was that too many of the shoots (invariably the strongest shoots) would go the wrong direction. Sometimes I could bend it to the right direction but that was always undesirable. Also I did not like having the grapes next to my face board.
Is there any particular reason why you suggest going with the single snake-shaped cordon versus a split V-shaped cordon like option B?
Thanks for the tip about keeping away from the edges.
No, really not any advantage over your option B, just a alternate design.
Here is a link to my arbor, if you have not already visited that thread.
Cedar and wire grape arbor - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit
I took the design off a page that is now defunct. The design had a vine at each of the 4 corners with the cordons running along the sides similar to your option C.
Well, I ended up having 7 vines with the cordons running in all kinds of directions. Some running lengthwise, some running crosswise, some running thru the middle and one vine smack dab in the middle of the arbor with the vines running every direction. Seems that vines on the arbor did what the vines wanted to do rather than what I wanted it to do.
I had plenty of shade. Had plenty of grapes until Pierces Disease. Now I just have one concord vine on the arbor and it has plenty of space.
One thing thing to note. Your little tendrils on your vines are going to be looking for something grab onto. They may not be able to grab on the 1"x1" pieces of lumber on top of your pergola. Also, the vines may try to climb up the siding of your house. Something to think about.
Most sun loving plants will spread easily towards the sun…
If you plant them on the shady side (normally north side) and train them up, they should easily spread across the top, towards the sunny (south/west sides).
If you planted them on the (south/west side)… I think you might have trouble getting them to grow away from the sun.
My wild muscadine that I have on a large trellis (for 20 years) has covered a huge trellis, but it’s fruiting branches always reach out in the south/west (sunny direction).
The pergola looks great, hope you get it covered in muscadine soon.
TNHunter
Progress update!
This was taken mid June of 2021:
Also got to sample a few small fruit that year:
And this is taken today, late April of 2022:
It might be hard to see how I’m training the cordons so I colored the two varieties here:
Hoping to have the cordons cover the pergola fully by the end of this year. If I had pruned better and stayed on top of eliminating side shoots I probably could have established the main cordons last year - but life got in the way.
This is what the growth looks like from below a few days ago.
Thoughts so far:
- To prune the easiest way has been to just get on top of the pergola and do it from above. I have pretty good balance, but this method is not without its risks. If I had to do it again I would consider somehow spacing the the purlins & rafters so I could pop out from underneath
- The spraying situation is pretty difficult, hard not to get the spray on you and everything on the deck. I purposely chose muscadines because they didn’t need spraying - only tried it once for OFM so far.
- Still trying to figure out cordon spacing for balancing having adequate shade on the deck during the summer and producing decent quality fruit. Currently trialing 18-24" cordon spacing and then doing late spring tip pruning to encourage branching (and thus more shade).
@dimitri_7a . My first attempt at growing muscadines was an overhead situation. Your vines look healthy but you’re finding out that the pruning can be difficult and sometimes dangerous. An alternative that I have seen used is to space your cordons apart 2-4’ and run as many as you want to. These would become permanent and the spurs off them would be cut back to two buds each year. This would be an easier task as the vine is developing but you can still do so but it will take some realignment and some heavy pruning initially.
Finally providing a decent amount of shade. I’m thinking by this time next year the entire pergola will be covered.
One thing I noticed is that either a) the purlins may be a bit too thick for the new growth to vine onto, which might mean it gets whipped around by wind and then the longer shoots gets broken off or b) the young vines get roasted when they touch a hot purlin on a 100°F day, occasionally killing off the growing tips. Saw 2-3 new shoots get killed back and remember the same thing happening last year.