Checking In On the Muscadines

Back in May 2014 we planted a muscadine vine out in the side yard.  It has grown and we pick muscadines off of it each year.  The yield seems to increase every year. Last year Russ taught me how to effectively prune it to maximize production.  It seems to be pretty happy despite the fact that the soil in the side yard is poor and compacted.  If you dig with a shovel, it is like digging in a parking lot - hard and packed earth.  I've been amending the soil and will continue to do so until I get it where I want it to be.

Meanwhile we are still going to get a nice crop.  I like to make jelly with the muscadines.  Tricia likes to come out to the "vineyard" on late summer afternoons and eat muscadines right off the vine when the fruit is sun-warmed.  Delicious!  I guess if there is a downside to these, it would be that they have many seeds and you have to spit a lot.  Back in THIS POST FROM 2013 I chronicled how we made new wine with some grapes from our neighbors.  If we have a nice enough harvest, I'd like to try to make a batch of new wine with muscadines and see how it would turn out.

This year I've found a recipe to make muscadine syrup and I'm going to try that.  It seems like topping a homemade blueberry and pecan pancake with muscadine syrup.  Forget Wheaties.   That, my friends, is the breakfast of champions!

Clusters of Muscadines

Stay tuned and later this summer, I'll post how the muscadine syrup making experiment goes.