Wild Muscadine propagation

[WilliamSYKES]

I'm hoping to buy some land and put in a vineyard for a winery in the future and have came up with a idea. All of the best muscadine wines I've had have a certain percentage of the grapes are wild muscadines that we picked from the woods. If I take cuttings from wild vines and propagate them and plant a few acres of them what would I have to call them? And them being cultivated shouldn't affect the taste of the fruit should it?

 

[Hokapsig]

taste will be affected by the soil which the grapes are grown. Rocky soil will give an earthy taste due to the minerals absorbed by the plant.

 

[WilliamSYKES]

taste will be affected by the soil which the grapes are grown. Rocky soil will give an earthy taste due to the minerals absorbed by the plant.

No rocky soil in the coastal counties of NC and most of my cuttings will come within sight of my vineyard location.

 

[garymc]

Muscadines are hard to propagate by cuttings. If you're talking in a year or two, I'd start selecting particular individual vines that you know will produce grapes, because some don't. Tie a wire or something on them to mark the vines. Then start pinning some of the vines. That's layering by taking a low branch of the vine and dig a little trench and put the vine in it and put a rock on the buried part. Months later or next spring you cut it separate from the mother vine and dig it up and transplant. The part in the trench should have roots. It's called pinning because you can use landscaping pins, a U shaped piece of wire used like a steeple to pin the shoot down. Just be careful and don't trip over the part between the mother vine and the trench and jerk it out of the ground. Also, you can just dig up the productive vines you've located and transplant them, then every year do the layering.
If you need a large amount quickly, you can make a misting bed and do the cuttings, but that's some trouble to go to if you only need a few vines.

 

[WilliamSYKES]

I was hoping to use the cutting propagation method since we already have three misting beds set up from where we had to propagate the blueberry plants to use on our farm. I'll try the layering technique to get some plants to use in my test vineyard next spring. If all goes well I'll be purchasing 70 acres this coming fall/winter to plant a large vineyard.

 

[bkrell]

70 acres is a lot! Are you going to have a market for that much fruit/wine?

Regarding wild vines, yeah, just make sure you are getting known fruit producers. The stat I've seen is something like 75% of wild vines are non-fruiting males? Really, though, you'd still probably be better off going with known quantity nursery-raised vines. Ison's in Georgia is the oldest/biggest/highest esteemed muscadine nursery and they sell almost all the top varieties. Everything I've bought from them has arrived in great condition and thrived in my soil. They're shipping now and you could get some vines in the ground now and not have to wait a year. Not meant to be a commercial for Ison's but they really do a top notch job. They had to delay my last order and when I called to ask why, they gave me a free vine and 2nd day air-shipped everything for my trouble.

 

[WilliamSYKES]

Thanks for the advice! I've never heard of that particular nursery before. I have been looking at some from Willis orchard out of Georgia though. Most of the vineyard will be in regular muscadine vines but I want ed to try the wild propagation because I feel it would be very popular in the market base I'm targeting. My vineyard will be all organic and so will my wines. If I can get everything going I will be the second Organic vineyard in eastern nc and the first organic winery east of our capital. Organic farming has become very popular in my state and if they are willing to pay organic prices I'm gonna grow it for them lol.

 

[bkrell]

Hah! Well I can see that angle. Good luck with it and make sure to share results!

 

[garymc]

I bought some plants from Willis a few years ago. They were guaranteed. None of them survived because they had hardly any roots. To use the guarantee, they require you to send the bottom half of the plant back. I did and got replacements. None of them survived. 2 years of my life gone. So I bought new plants elsewhere. Check around and you'll find others with similar experiences. Isons has a good reputation and their founder developed the Ison variety, one of the best all around varieties for fresh eating, jelly, and winemaking. It's also a good pollinator.

edited to add: You should try to get virus free cloned vines, but your wild ones will probably bring every known virus and disease that muscadines are susceptible to into your vineyard. Fortunately, they can live with and survive almost anything. Speaking of dangers to muscadines, if there are row crop operations around you or anybody using 2,4-D or dicamba herbicides, they drift and the slightest whiff of them will damage any grape including muscadines.

 

[WilliamSYKES]

I bought some plants from Willis a few years ago. They were guaranteed. None of them survived because they had hardly any roots. To use the guarantee, they require you to send the bottom half of the plant back. I did and got replacements. None of them survived. 2 years of my life gone. So I bought new plants elsewhere. Check around and you'll find others with similar experiences. Isons has a good reputation and their founder developed the Ison variety, one of the best all around varieties for fresh eating, jelly, and winemaking. It's also a good pollinator.

edited to add: You should try to get virus free cloned vines, but your wild ones will probably bring every known virus and disease that muscadines are susceptible to into your vineyard. Fortunately, they can live with and survive almost anything. Speaking of dangers to muscadines, if there are row crop operations around you or anybody using 2,4-D or dicamba herbicides, they drift and the slightest whiff of them will damage any grape including muscadines.

Luckily the closest row crop to me is about 5-10 miles away. Only farms close to me is my organic blueberry farm. Most of my wild cutting would come off of my land and they are the vines my family has gotten wild grapes for our muscadine wine for years. I might just try and keep my wild vine field and my bought vines in separate fields to cut down on diseases