Ison has a useful table in his book. For self-fertiles like Ison, you can expect 12-25 lbs in the 2nd, 50-75 in the third and maximum amount starting with the 4th year.
Wow… that is a lot of fruit.
I have a big family… will load them up.
I have very fond memories of my grandmothers muscadine jelly. Cant wait to make my own.
TNHunter
I am making jam from the Ison muscardines now. Ison nursery says that they make all their jams and yellies from it.
Did you include the skins?
I once made jam out of Concords while including the skins. Didn’t like the way it turned out. Maybe I did not cook the skins down enough. Whenever I cooked plum jam with the skins it turned out excellent. Never have tried making jam out of muscadines. Always jelly,
Recently cooked some jelly with Gravs using Red Hot Cinnamon Flavored Candy as the sweetener. Turned out great. One way to make plain old Gravs into something exciting. Afterwards ate the leftover pulp as applesauce. ![]()
A fully grown Ison with 20 feet of trellis will produce between 100 and 150 pounds of fruit. Keep in mind that heavy fruit load delays ripening and you have to give the vine about 5 pounds of fertilizer just after harvest. Also, spring pruning on Ison should be very heavy. I only leave 1 or 2 buds per fruiting spur to help prevent overloads.
I used one of the recipes from Bill Ison’s book that uses the skins as well. I think it turned out pretty well. Ison’s pulp is green, the skins add red color; they are also pretty thick and tasty to me. I slipped the skins off and separated from the pulp, cut in smaller pieces. Boil the pulp for 5 min, then strain to remove the seeds. Combine pulp and skins and simmer till soft (20 min). Cool down, in fridge over night. Then add 1 pack pectin (4 lb grapes), 3 tbs lemon juice, bring to rolling boil, add 7 c sugar, bring back to rolling boil and keep boiling for 1 min. Then pack into canning jars. I was skeptical if the short boil would be enough for the jam to set, but it worked very well.
Muscadine and fruit pick/wash helpers. Each container has volume marks on the side for easy estimates of quantity picked. I use google sheets to quickly record the amounts/vine/date on my phone.
Sometimes I take two of the 5 gallon containers but when both are full they are a little heavier than I want to carry.
Just checked the brix on a few varieties. Lane is about ready with a brix of 19. I’m going to wait a few days so most of the vine can be picked at one time. Oh My taste good with 15 brix but it will get much higher.
How bad do deer browse you guys vines? Do they eat the fruit?
I get heavy pressure on all my other fruit trees. Wondering how bad they’re gonna hit my vines.
Deer rarely browse muscadines. I’ve seen fruit eaten, especially in a drought. Raccoons IME are far more likely to eat your muscadines. An electric fence is effective if properly set up and maintained.
Muscadines are very low maintenance. Some have reported problem with critters but in my experience, little bothers them. Maybe June bugs. Disease free. For the most part no spraying needed. Deer may be after your apples if you have them but more than likely they will ignore the muscadines. Some of the newer varieties like Razzmatazz which is a muscadine hybrid I don’t know about.
Table grapes on the other hand is a critter and disease magnet.
My Hall and Paulk are starting to ripen, with Hall closer. Still at least a few weeks from any harvest. For some reason, I had relatively poor fruit set on Paulk even though there were a ton of flowers.
Deer ate the shoots off my first year vines last year. That got only bad in a drought, like you said; but realistically we have to expect drought periods each year, so for me that was a big concern and caused me to put an electric fence around my vines.
I planted 2 Paulk and one of them fruited slower than the other in the 2nd year. This year they both fruited well.
My vines are fenced in and no deer has bothered them. My opinion is that raccoons are the biggest threat. They appear to bring the family to a late dinner. They can almost strip a vine in one night. I have used a 1-2 wire electric fence for about 5 years now. I only turn it on at night and as of now nothing bothers the fruit except for me.
Where do you locate the wire to keep raccoons out? I had an animal climb up one of my muscardine trunks and make a mess. I doubt it was a raccoon, don’t think the vine would hold one. I was thinking maybe rats or a possum?
Do you have any squirrels nearby? I’ve watched a squirrel climb up the main vine and eat my muscadines. He wiped out my Supreme vine.
Could be but we very rarely see squirrels. I put my Kania 2000 trap in the vine, but the animal did not return so far.
@folkert
My setup is simple and low cost. I have never seen an opossum or raccoon jump upward. They will climb up low hanging vines. During ripening I trim the branches up a little. Below is a couple of pictures. I only run it at night and I start it about 2 weeks before any of the fruit are ripe and continue until the harvest is finished. Bonus is it keeps the armadillos away.






