@Auburn Which variety do you have that you consider to be your best juice/jelly muscadine?
I planted a Carlos vine from a local garden center a couple of weeks ago that I read on Ison’s makes a fantastic wine. I probably won’t use it for wine but I’m hoping that I will like the juice/jelly from it. Paid $30 for it so I better like it. Planted it on my 24’X12’X10’ arbor. The Concord vine that was on it died over the winter.
I’m sorry but I don’t grow any of my varieties with the intent to make juice/jelly so my experience is limited. All my muscadines are intended for fresh/frozen consumption. With that said I give my neighbors muscadines and some of them make jelly or wine. I forgot to mention that we occasionally make cobblers with the seedless muscadines.
Well, please let me ask this - what is the sweetest variety that you have?
Black Beauty can get very sweet on good years when we don’t have excess rain. Hall tends to be the favorite of most people who try all my varieties. I only got a few Paulk last year and if I was starting over I would give it more consideration. It is big and sweet, and being perfect flowered It will probable carry a heavy crop each year.
Big Red is arguably the sweetest. It would not make good wine as there is not enough acid to balance out the sweetness. It would make a good blend if a higher acid/tart variety was blended with Big Red juice.
Greg Ison states that Sugargate is the sweetest. He doesn’t list the sugar content as opposed to Big Red which he lists as having 20%. However, he does state that if he was to leave this world and that he could only have one last muscadine to eat, it would be Sugargate.
Makes me want to plant a Sugargate.
The only reason that I would want to make wine out of muscadines would be to use it in canning pears. 8 years or so ago I canned pears using Sweet Red wine. Turned out much too strong-tasting pears and then then later tried a Sparkling Rose wine that was much better, although I can’t say that it was better than just using apple cider vinegar. Certainly, more expensive.
I not getting many pears these days. Have you ever heard of canning apples with wine? I guess it would be possible to can muscadines with muscadine wine…
That sounds really good.
I’ve eaten sugargate grown by a friend in Birmingham Alabama. It is a small berry, very sweet, but does not have the “melting pulp” trait carried by others from B.O. Fry’s breeding work. When Big Red was first released in 1988, it was touted as 27% sugar. I don’t know why they lowered it in recent years. I purchased vines in 1988 and still have one of them growing at my Grandmother’s house.
Does anyone have the Noble vine? Ison’s writes that it is the standard for making red muscadine wine. I’m thinking that it is probably good for juice and jelly too,
Is it possible to graft a muscadine vine to a different variety?
I had Noble about 30 years ago. It may be good for wine, but it is not good for fresh eating. I was not making wine at the time.
Muscadine can be grafted but generally not worth the effort to do so. Rooted cuttings are too easy to make.
This is what is going on at my place. I’m going into the third year at this location and the vines are loaded with buds/flowers (Hall, Oh My, and Black Beauty). The self fertile varieties have been very dependable about being pollinated but the female Black Beauty can be less dependable. This go around I planted Black Beauty between a Hall and Lane (2nd year) so I’m hoping this arrangement will help encourage it to be a more dependable fruiter. Scarlett (female) is one year old and has been an aggressive grower but it only has three bud clusters. Looks like it will be a little slower to set a good crop but I sure would like to get a little taste sample.
How are things going with your muscadines? Weather has been good and I expect that 80-90% of my pollination will be completed in about five days. Looking like a huge crop of Hall and Oh My (I hope). Not sure about Black Beauty. Japanese Beetles are big time right now. They are mostly focussed on my muscadine, hazels, and green beans. Even with the Beetle problems we generally get a good crop. Muscadines do well in most years. Hope each of you has a big harvest this season.
My Scuppernong vine looks like it will have a huge crop, which is good because the two Concord vines died to the roots over the winter. Although they are both sprouting back up, it will be a while before they have grapes. The Scuppernong makes as delicious of a jelly as the Concord, maybe even better. Don’t know about the juice though.
Here is a picture of the Carlos vine I planted this spring next to an arbor post. It really has not grown any since planting, but it seems to be doing okay. It is about 9.5’ tall. I pruned some of the lower foliage off and trimmed it up, but it still has 6 separate trunks (canes may be a better term) which begin about halfway up. I’m not sure whether I should prune them off to a lesser amount. What would you do?
Pick one or two that you want to grow and lengthen. Pinch out the tip of the others leaving the green leaves to support plant growth. The sprouts with growing tip will grow faster. Eventually the tip pruned sprouts will grow from side buds. These too can be pinched leaving leaves to keep feeding the plant.
My neighbor while I was growing up had an arbor of what I’m pretty sure was the scuppernong variety. It was always loaded with fruit and we would snack on them for a few weeks each year. When ripe they were very sweet and I assume they would make great juice. I would grow some table grapes but muscadines are so much easier.
Scuppernongs were a large part of growing up for me. We had half a dozen vines that were about 3 inches diameter so maybe 30 years old. They are not economic today with less than 1/4 the production of modern varieties. The flavor of scuppernong is unique. Also, Scuppernong is a parent of most modern muscadine varieties. It transmits large size, good flavor, and exceptional sweetness to offspring.
I traveled extensively for my job back in the 1980’s and 1990’s working in the Southeastern U.S. including Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Each summer, I would find wild muscadines to sample. When I was in eastern North Carolina, I sampled wild muscadines that tasted almost exactly like Scuppernongs. Guess where Scuppernong originated?
The grape flea beetle larvae went away within a week of using the Grandevo. I don’t know if there was a cause and effect relationship, but of course that’s encouraging. Black Beauty and Supreme look like they’ll set a good crop. Late Fry is growing well after being frozen to the ground.
First glance I thought it was a black bear!
Yes, I noticed that he strangely resembled a black bear too. When I first uploaded the picture, a similar photos page came up and they all had a picture of a black bear.
A few years ago a black bear did travel thru the county (just east of Memphis). An elderly woman spotted it in a tree in her back yard. She called the county sheriff’s department, with "Hey there’s a bear in my back yard. The reply she got back was “Mam, we don’t do bear calls!”. 
