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Live in zone 7a which is borderline for muscadines. Last spring I planted few, winter killed one outright, another only had about 3 feet of the cordons killed. The third is the one I have a question about. It appeared to have been killed but the trunk is budding out at about 2 foot high, it...

I have been trying to eliminate them from my farm, although It probably won't do much good since there are fields of them within several hundred yards. This year as I was doing some touch up pruning to some pear trees, I came up with the idea of grafting onto the Bradford pear root stock. I...

Thanks. Will see how many flowers I can collect today.

Did you add hot water to the flowers or cold? I assume you added K Meta and waited 24 hrs prior to pitching? What do you think about adding about a pound of sugar and KMeta to the flowers and letting them macerate for 24 hours prior to adding the water and starting the ferment? Would that...

@BigDaveK, Redbuds are blooming at my location. I am thinking about trying this. Have you tried this recently? Would you make it again, any changes? Is it best to pick flowers when they are in bud or fully opened.

nice work!

I have no experience growing grapes. Last spring I planted a few. Two wine grape vines, Lomanto and Black Spanish and 4 muscadines , I built two 60 foot single wire trellises, I used 7" wood end post set at an angle, two 5" wood post 20 ft from each other and the ends and used 3 T post each a...

thank you, I do appreciate you sharing your observations.

I am not trying to be a **** or question your procedure/results but I am having trouble understanding some of this. If the juice SG was 1.060 and most of this is from sugar alcohols, and they aren’t fermentable, shouldn’t the ending SG be nearly unchanged? How can the SG have dropped all the way...

Sounds like I have my plan, a 3+ gallon full fruit ground cherry! Will probably use the 71b since I have that and I don't have any experience using QA23. I guess there was no problem starting fermentation at the 1.140? or did you step feed the sugar? I know the sugar alcohols won't ferment...

Have you tasted this yet? Did more fruit improve it? I have about 20 lbs frozen from last year and I'm trying to decide on how to proceed. I am thinking about a full fruit, starting with a lower pH, maybe 3.0-3.2 for a little more tartness. I have 71b yeast but thinking about trying QA23...

Do you bother adding K sorbate or depend on the high alcohol?

I am going to try this. Just to be sure, you start with 1 qt lemon juice in the original 5 gallon recipe instead of two, regular nutrient and tannin extra sugar to step feed until the EC-1118 gives up at 18-20% then add 4, or is it 5, more bottles of lemon juice (decreasing ABV), 750 ml...

Anyone, other than @hounddawg , made skeeter pee port? Did you like it? Thinking about scaling down the recipe and trying a gallon for fun.

I believe both calculations are correct, but your inputs are different. In @Khristyjeff's input you are starting with 6 gallons at 1.08, in yours you are starting with 4.739 gallons at 1.081. You are adding 1 gallon of water, AGAIN ROUGHLY, you will need 2 lbs of sugar to raise the sg of the...

You need to use your hydrometer. Roughly, 1 lb of sugar will raise the sg of 1 gallon by 0.450, so it would increase 6 gallons by 0.075. You would need 21 oz of sugar to increase sg by 0.010. You need add part, stir thoroughly, check this with a hydrometer then repeat until you reach your...

Straw would block the wind and insulate the ground but I would have to buy straw. It also might attract rodents.

That's what I was thinking, that it would be too little mass to retain heat. I'm going to try it on that one vine anyway. I can't think of any downside, at least it will block the wind. I am expecting that I will loose a few of the grape vines every few years but hope they will come back like...

This year I planted several muscadine grape vines. I am at the northern limit for muscadines and have chosen the most cold hardy but expect that some will die with unusually cold winters. Would something like this help? I have fig trees planted on the south side of my brick house and three...

got it! thanks