The mighty muscadine is an often maligned, yet special Southern fruit. You can find these native grapes at roadside stands, farmers markets, you-pick operations and even some grocery stores now through October.
“I grew up loving muscadines,” says Sarah Lowder, viticulturist extension specialist for the University of Georgia. “Now it’s my job to handle muscadines.”
Lowder loves to eat them like regular grocery store grapes, but these are fresher and didn’t travel thousands of miles from California or South America. Still, she acknowledges older muscadine varieties have big crunchy seeds and thick skins, textures that can stop some people from enjoying the flavor. Muscadine breeders are working hard to find more palatable varieties because of the plant’s small environmental footprint due to impressive disease and insect resistance. “I would love to see it produced and enjoyed by a lot more people,” Lowder says.
If you’ve tried muscadines in the past, it might be time to check out a few new varieties. “There’s the big purple [grape] ‘Supreme,’ which apparently everybody loves because it’s full of sugar,” says Sylvia Crowe of SunWoman Farms in Bogart. The farm grows five different types of muscadines on 7 acres, including Supreme, and offers you-pick and bulk options for customers. “Right now we’re open seven days a week 9 a.m.–7 p.m., until they’re gone,” Crowe says. “If they do like last year, they’ll go ‘til the first of November or until they’re picked out.”
Customers are encouraged to try the grapes as they pick. Some are purple, others red or bronze, or even green early in their maturation. Her customers eat the fruit fresh, or turn them into jellies, jams, juices or sauces, Crowe says. “We’ve got people who make wine out of them, too,” she says.
Arguably the most well-known muscadine is the scuppernong, a grape used plenty by Southern winemakers.
If you’re already sold on muscadines and would like to try growing one in your backyard, you’re in luck. They are hardy plants, Lowder says. “They’re much easier to grow than any other grape vine,” she says.
People interested in planting muscadines will want to double check whether they have a self-fertile variety, such as Paulk, or a variety that needs a pollination partner, like Supreme. Self-fertile varieties tend to produce smaller fruits more consistently than female vines, according to UGA muscadine research. Space, time to harvest and what you plan to do with the grapes should come into consideration when picking the best muscadine variety for your vineyard, whether small or large.
You will need some sort of heavy-duty support structure for your muscadine vine. I have a huge, older purple variety of muscadine propped on an old wire fence, held up by several sturdy fence posts. I trim one side every other year so the vine doesn’t swallow the blueberry bushes to its left or the giant rosemary bush to the right.
The Athens area is so good for muscadines, you might find them a nuisance. Muscadine vines run rampant in the woods behind my house, hanging in great garlands from pines and oaks. Vines can be kept in check with a lawnmower, but can become a tripping hazard within one summer.
Muscadines don’t produce fruit without plenty of sunlight hours, so avoid planting it in shady garden spots. Besides sunlight, the plant thrives in slightly acidic soil (a 6–6.5 pH is best) and produces best with regular irrigation. I didn’t have any irrigation set on my vine this year, so the bumper crop of flowers turned into a few handfuls of fruit. It’s enough to enjoy, but I might add a drip line this winter to ensure a better harvest next year.
Muscadines can attract some pests, such as saddleback caterpillars and Japanese beetles, but generally don’t sustain as much damage as other, tastier plants like roses. Birds like to build nests in them because of the dense branching and leaves.
If you’re looking for a tidy, well-behaved plant to add to your garden, a muscadine might not be a good fit. But if you’re looking for a native fruit producer, or even a vine to run along a sturdy fence to give you a bit more privacy in the summer months, a muscadine could be the plant for you.
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