Muscadine pruning is a common subject of questions in the early months of the year. Many people have vines of this tasty (in my opinion) fruit in their yards. People often call bronze muscadines “scuppernongs,” but both bronze and dark types fall within the muscadine species.

The muscadine is an easy-to-grow fruit for our area – it doesn’t typically have serious disease problems, is forgiving of Japanese beetle damage, and doesn’t require much fertilizer.

One limitation to growing muscadines in our area is their susceptibility to cold weather – vines can be killed if temperatures get lower than about 10 F – but there are vines that have survived for many years, and you can give yourself some protection against cold temperatures by choosing one of the more cold-hardy varieties.

For information on varieties and how to plant and train new vines, give me a call or visit www.ces.ncsu.edu/muscadines/muscadine/cultivars.html and www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-8203.html.

Here is a simple rule of thumb for muscadine pruning: Prune while the vine is dormant (e.g., late winter) leaving one spur of two to three buds on the previous year’s growth every hand-width along the cordon.

Now, I said that was simple, but I may need to explain some terms. A cordon is a “permanent arm” of the vine that comes off of the trunk and runs along a wire. Generally, someone growing muscadines commercially will have a trunk and two or four cordons coming off of the trunk. However, I realize that in many yards, the vine is grown on an arbor rather than along one or two wires. In this situation, you can improvise and choose several shoots coming off of the trunk to treat as your “cordons.”

Once you’ve identified your cordons, the idea is to have one “spur” with two to three buds every hand-width along the cordons. The wood in this spur needs to be the previous year’s growth, since, and here is one of the most important concepts of muscadine pruning, fruit comes off of the previous year’s growth. The previous year’s growth will be the small shoots from which no other shoots are growing.

You may be able to picture in your mind that a vine not pruned regularly, or even pruned strictly according to what I wrote above, can eventually get overgrown, so that some of the “previous year’s growth” will be continually farther from the cordon. (In one year, a shoot grows from the cordon. In the next year a shoot grows off of that shoot. In the following year, and shoot grows from the second year’s shoot, etc.)

Fortunately, vines will also send up new shoots directly from the cordon, so that old growth can be cut off, and a new shoot coming directly off the cordon can be selected as the one that will be cut back to two to three buds. If there is not currently a shoot coming directly off the cordon that looks like a good candidate for a replacement spur, you can encourage the plant to put one out by removing old growth in that area of the cordon. Remove unneeded growth in the hand-width area between the spurs.

If a vine is really overgrown, you can do what is called “renewal pruning.” If you’re renewing someone else’s vine, I suggest explaining this before you do it so that they don’t have a fit when they see what you’ve done. Renewal pruning involves cutting cordons (see definition in the second paragraph) back to about six inches and then selecting one shoot from the growth that then comes from the stub to be the new cordon. This, of course, will severely reduce fruiting for the year in which it’s done, so you might want to renew half of your cordons in one year and half the following year.

You might want to check out http://www.smallfruits.org/Muscadines/production/MuscadineGuide2003.pdf

We have a tree fruit pruning demonstration scheduled for Jan. 23 (10 a.m.-noon) at Hill’s Orchard and Vineyard, 3452 Marvin Hill Place in Trinity. Mr. Hill has muscadines, as well, and I’d be glad to do a short demonstration of muscadine pruning after the tree fruit pruning demonstration, if people express interest. Pre-register (318-6000) so that we can contact you if plans change due to weather, etc.



Mary Helen Ferguson is a horticulture agent with the Randolph County Center of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service in Asheboro. She can be reached at (336) 318-6000 or by e-mail at maryhelen_ferguson@ncsu.edu