Picking Muscadines

A couple of Saturdays ago Russ and I went canoeing on the bayou.  As we hiked through the thick undergrowth carrying "The Garfish" to the water, Russ (the Horticulture major) was scoping out all of the different plants growing in the low lying area and something caught his eye.  When I asked him what he was looking at on the ground, he told me that there was red fruit all over the ground.  When I walked over, I immediately knew what it was – muscadines!  They grow wild around here and they vine high into the air in the woods supported by tree limbs.  They stretch way up into the canopy of the tall trees and are unreachable by humans – but the birds sure find them!

It reminded me that I needed to go check on our muscadines.  Oftentimes people make a big mistake in planting different types of fruit trees in their yard that aren’t indigenous to our area, diseases and climate.  This results more often than not in crop failure.  That’s why it is a good idea to consult with the LSU Cooperative Extension Office to see which varieties grow best here and then seek out and plant them.  So rather than try to grow grapes that might not work in our area, we chose a variety that thrives and survives down here – the muscadine.

We planted our muscadine vine and have it trellising on a piece of livestock panel right near the pumpkin patch.  It is still relatively small, but will continue to grow and eventually fill out the trellis.

The Muscadine Vine

The fruit is ripening now.  It starts off small, green and very hard and slowly matures into a burgundy color and then a deeper red, almost black color.  You can see the varying stages of ripeness in the photo below.

Ripening muscadines

We like to wait until they are at their ripest (very dark color) and pick them then.  The funny thing about it is that with most fruit, we like to chill it in the refrigerator prior to eating, but we have found that the muscadines are best eaten right off the vine when they are still warmed by the hot summer sun.  The sweet, warm grape juice is so flavorful.  These aren’t seedless grapes.  There are about 3 or 4 seeds in each muscadine, so you’ve got to be ready to spit.

We eat a lot of them right off the vine, but a few of them make it into the house for us to enjoy.  We spit the seeds into the compost bucket and quite a few of them come up in the garden.  I’ve never tried to transplant one of the muscadine seedlings, but maybe I will in the future. 

This is only our second muscadine harvest, so we don’t have a huge harvest, but as our little vineyard grows and the production increases, we’ll make some jelly with some in addition to eating them right off the vine.  We also want to research to see if you can make grape leaf rolls with muscadine leaves like you can with regular grape leaves.  Muscadine leaves are a little smaller, so it may not work.  I especially like the timing of the muscadine harvest as they ripen right after the figs ripen, leaving staggered harvests so we aren’t overwhelmed with everything getting ripe at the same time.