Muscadine harvest, usually late August into September, and then the canes hardening and the leaves turning.
What to do
- Pick muscadines as they drop rather than cutting bunches. A ripe one comes away at a touch.
- Clear fallen and mummified fruit from under the vine; it carries disease into next year.
- Do not feed.
- Let the canes harden rather than encouraging more growth.
Pierce's disease, and why the variety is everything
There is a bacterium spread by sharpshooter insects that kills European and
most American bunch grapes in Florida within a few years. Nothing you do in
the garden prevents it. The only answer is to grow a vine that tolerates it,
which means muscadines, or one of the Florida-bred bunch hybrids such as Blanc
du Bois or Conquistador that were specifically selected for it.
This is the single reason people fail with grapes here, and it happens at the
point of purchase rather than in the garden. A Thompson Seedless ordered
online will grow beautifully for two years and then decline and die, and there
is no rescuing it. Ask us what a vine is before you plant it.
Muscadines also need a word about pollination: some varieties are female only
and need a self-fertile vine nearby to crop at all. Others are perfect
flowered and fruit alone. It is a question with a definite answer, and it is
worth asking before you plant one vine.
Prune far harder than feels reasonable
A grape fruits on shoots growing from wood that is one year old. Each winter
you remove something like eighty to ninety per cent of what grew last year,
leaving short spurs of two or three buds along a permanent framework. People
find this alarming the first time and then find they get three times the fruit.
An unpruned vine becomes a tangle that makes leaves instead of grapes, shades
its own fruit, and stays wet after rain, which brings on everything fungal.
Sun, air and a real trellis
Build the support before you plant, not after. A grape is a permanent
structure for twenty years and retrofitting a trellis under an established
vine is miserable work.
Keep the canopy open through summer so sun reaches the fruit and air moves
through the leaves. Most grape disease in Florida is a humidity problem first
and a spray problem second.
Spring
Budbreak and fast shoot growth, then flowering. The vine goes from bare wood to several feet of new growth in weeks.
- Feed once as the buds break.
- Tie new shoots to the trellis while they are soft and bend easily.
- Rub off shoots coming from the trunk below the framework.
- Water through the dry spring while the vine is building its canopy.
Summer
The fruit colours and ripens, muscadines later than bunch grapes, and the canopy tries to take over.
- Keep the canopy open. Pull or shorten shoots that are shading the fruit.
- Stop nitrogen entirely. Feeding now gives you leaves instead of sugar.
- Water during a drought but keep the leaves dry if you can.
- Pick bunch grapes when they taste right rather than when they look right; colour comes before sugar.
Fall
Muscadine harvest, usually late August into September, and then the canes hardening and the leaves turning.
- Pick muscadines as they drop rather than cutting bunches. A ripe one comes away at a touch.
- Clear fallen and mummified fruit from under the vine; it carries disease into next year.
- Do not feed.
- Let the canes harden rather than encouraging more growth.
Winter
Dormancy, and the most important job of the grape year.
- Prune hard, in January or early February. Remove eighty to ninety per cent of last year's wood, leaving short spurs on the permanent framework.
- Do the pruning before the buds swell. A vine pruned after budbreak bleeds and sulks.
- Check and tighten the trellis while you can see the structure.
- Do not feed.
We are not listing grape online at the moment.
What goes to the booth and what is on the website are not always the same
thing. Come and see us at the booth, or reply to any reminder email and ask,
and we will tell you what we have.
