FAQ: How to care for muscadines and blackberries

Q. I live in north Alabama and purchased a house in March that has an existing small muscadine and scupadine orchard that is irrigated. 5 rows about 35-40 feet each in length. I was told last year they harvested over 600 lbs. of muscadines. They produced real well this year, however,  I am not familiar with the best way to care for them and want to make sure they continue to produce.  When and what do I need to fertilize with?  How often and how much do I need to water?  Do I need to spray pesticide, insecticides, etc.?   I watched your video on pruning and it seems to be very similar to pruning roses (of which I am very familiar).  In North Alabama would  January or February be the best time to prune and can you prune to much?  It does not appear to me that they have been pruned in quiet sometime.

Also have a row of tame blackberries.  I have the same questions about them.

A. Before fertilizing, take a soil sample to your nearby Cooperative Extension office for analysis. Follow the recommendations. Fertilize only as needed. 10-10-10 is often prescribed. The vines do not need to grow so long as to grow along the ground. Vines 3' to 4' are long enough. Muscadine roots grow close to the soil surface and run a great distance, so broadcast the fertilizer over the area. (Just in case you ever get the notion to roto-till or disc the space between your rows, don't do it.)

Muscadines are drought-tolerant, so irrigation of mature vines is only necessary during extreme drought. Newly planted vines can be irrigated until established. A couple inches of water per week should be sufficient.

Pruning should be done annually without fail. You should be able to begin pruning soon after Thanksgiving. Pruning too much will only reduce the size of your crop; it won't kill the plant. If they haven't been pruned in a long time, you have a lot of work to do. My videos should be instructional in that regard.


Blackberry culture is similar. Have the soil sampled. Fertilize as prescribed. Irrigate a couple of inches per week during dry weather. Prune out old canes annually. Keep weeds out of the rows using a pre-emergent. Post-emergents can damage the canes.

Advice needed on saving a wild muscadine

I took down a tree last Fall that had a large wild muscadine vine growing into it. I was going to clear it too but my wife convinced me to see if we could save it. It took a bit of work but I basically removed branch by branch of the fallen tree, until all that was left was the muscadine. I am wondering if you can give any advice on pruning and training it? 

I'm prepared to build a trellis for it; the usual setup of 9 gauge wire between posts 20' apart. And it should get plenty of sun where it is. But since the vine grew up wild, it isn't in the usual training pattern. The trunk goes about 15 feet before it does anything, and then it branches and splits several times, and the growth is just everywhere. In all it's about 45 feet long. Do you have any advice, especially on how aggressive I should be in removing growth? Thanks! 

It would be difficult to advise about exactly how to prune it. That would require a "hands-on" session. It would indeed be difficult to train it to a trellis of any sort without radical pruning.
Since the trunk is bare to 15 feet or so, you might consider a high overhead trellis. Take a look at the image below:




I found this image on TripAdvisor. It's a vineyard in NZ. You can see how wire is strung from post to post, the arms stretched across and the vines closely pruned. Something like this could work if you care to go to the trouble and expense.

I visited a similar system at a fruit experiment station near Shepherdstown, WV about 30 years ago. It was made for apples. Telephone poles supported an overhead wire grid upon which the scaffold limbs were trained in a flat umbrella fashion. The trees were pruned annually by a person who would walk across the top of the grid wearing footwear resembling snowshoes brandishing either a swing-blade or a "string trimmer" outfitted with a circular saw blade. (I tried to find a picture of the Shepherdstown system online, but no luck. Unfortunately, I have no pictures existing from my visit.)

A less interesting but more practical solution might be to cut the plant to the ground during dormancy. It's likely the stump would sprout and you could train one of the young shoots to a convention single-wire trellis.

I hope this helps.


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