Muscadine

Size, growth and what to expect

Muscadine grows fast, nearly three feet a year in our growth estimator, and in three years a planted vine can cover 6 feet by 15. Wild vines climb 30 to 90 feet into the treetops, and a vine may live for decades.

Small, greenish flowers open from late April into June. Its grapes come singly or in small, loose clusters, half an inch to an inch across, purple-black or sometimes bronze, with thick, tough skins and up to five hard seeds. The grapes ripen from August into October and drop when ripe, and birds, deer, wild turkeys, raccoons, foxes and black bears eat them. People eat them fresh or make them into jelly, juice and wine.

It grows wild from Delaware south to Florida and west along the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas, and up the Mississippi valley to Missouri and Kentucky. It lives in upland and lowland woods, swamps, thickets, forest edges, hammocks and dunes. At the north edge of its range it is rare, critically imperiled in Missouri and unconfirmed for decades in West Virginia.

How to grow Muscadine

Muscadine fruits best in full sun, and shade for more than a few hours a day cuts the crop. It wants deep, well-drained, slightly acid soil, and it fails where water stands even briefly after rain or over a hardpan. Once established it is quite drought tolerant. Winter cold below 0 degrees F injures the vines, and they do best where winters seldom fall below 10 degrees F. Give it a single wire 5 to 6 feet above the ground or a sturdy arbor, since a vine on a pergola is hard to keep pruned. Set the trellis 10 feet from a wall, and set vines 20 feet apart along it. It burns readily, so where wildfire is a risk keep it out of the planting zone next to a house. It climbs whatever it reaches, so keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in late winter or early spring, once hard freezes are past, in a hole wide enough to spread the roots and at the depth they grew. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stem. Cut the new vine back to one stem of two or three buds. Tie the strongest new shoot to a stake and lead it up to the wire. Strip the ripe grapes and wash the seed clean of the pulp. For a spring sowing, hold the seed damp in the refrigerator for 12 weeks first. Seedlings vary and do not come true to a named variety, so named varieties are grown from cuttings.

Water during dry spells for the first two summers, and keep a circle around the vine free of weeds with a coarse bark mulch. Feed young vines lightly, since too much nitrogen at once can kill them. Train an arm along the wire in each direction, aiming to reach the wire the first season and full length the second. Prune hard every winter, cutting each side shoot back to two to four buds, or the vine becomes a tangled, fruitless mass. Deer browse it, though the vine is moderately resistant to them.

Wild vines are male or female, and males outnumber females, so plant three to five seedlings to be sure of a fruiting female. Named varieties with perfect flowers, such as 'Carlos' and 'Noble', fruit alone and pollinate female vines within about 25 feet, but seedlings do not come true to them. Wind and insects carry the pollen. Japanese beetles are the worst insect, and powdery mildew, black rot, bitter rot and leaf spot can strike, though home vines often need no spraying. Trained to a wire, a female vine bears its first grapes in about the third year after planting. Other vines with similar fruit are poisonous, so be sure of the plant before eating its grapes.