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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