I have not checked my muscadine vines closely for some time… they are up the road a bit at the far end of my new orchard. I see them when we drive to town but not up close.
Found this with my Oh My vine today when I went to prune it.
Rats… now that looks like a pretty serious split to me. It also looks like it happened some time ago (not fresh).
Back in early November we had a storm roll thru and it almost blew over some of my kiowa blackberries that had good support stakes. It did bend the stakes some but the blackberries are good.
If I had to guess… I bet that same wind storm caused my Oh My to split like this.
That split runs down 14 inches… the bottom of the split is about belt high on me.
So what do I do here ?
Whack it off below the split and let all that grow back ? That seems most likely to me.
Since the split is not fresh… it has been like that a while… dont suppose there is any way for that to heal back ?
I am sure some of you have experienced this before… I remember seeing pictures of a less severe split in a post here once.
The vine will eventually heal over on both sides but won’t re-join. There are several ways to address this. One would be to bury the split vine and let it turn into roots. Another would be to just let it be and see if the vine can fix it. A third would be to remove one side and let new growth come from the other side.
To heal the halves would need to remain separate… right ?
I thought about scraping the split inside surface on both sides to freshen it up and then bind it back together… but was not sure if that would work in the dead of winter.
I get by with grafting a few things mid to late March. Pears cherries goumi… but most is done in April.
Sorry to see the split. I had a vine split 2 years ago and I just cut it down and replaced it with an air layer. Since the split I added a t-post about 18" on each side of the other vines trunk. I’m not sure if the split will grow back together because muscadines are reported to not callus like fruit trees do but it’s worth a try. I’m guessing that the vine will live long enough to do an air layer but that’s like starting over. Whatever you do it will be interesting to see how the vines does long term.
If it were me, I would cut the vine off below the split before it buds out in the spring. A mature vine with a vigorous root system will regrow the whole framework in one season. You will only miss one season of fruit. If you try to repair it, it will never be as good as an unsplit trunk. Even if it continues to grow, the likelihood of trunk disease getting into that lengthy of a split surface is high.
I agree with @SethDoty, partly because it would continue to bug me that it wasn’t as good a vine as it might be even if it survives. I had a Supreme that was about that age that was mauled by cicadas in our big brood year and the arms that were developing nicely were completely torn up. Cicadas seem to just love anything horizontal they can sit under to lay the eggs.
I trellis my muscadines higher than most, about 6.5-7 feet up. The main stem was clear of damage about 3 feet up from the ground and I cut it there at the end of the season when it was dormant. It was beautifully regrown back to the wire with full length arms and lots of side shoots the next season and producing a nice crop the year after that. The hardest part was staying on top of all the new shoots that didn’t fit the intended structure, since the vigorous root was ready to push a lot of growth right away.
