On that warm, late-winter day when you feel the urge to get
outdoors, think ahead to late summer and sweet muscadines fresh
off the vine.

Hey, the vine could use a helping hand now.

“Muscadines grow so vigorously every season the vines can get
very congested if they go unpruned,” said Gerard Krewer, a
horticulturist with the University of Georgia Extension
Service.

The weeks ahead, Krewer said, are prime time for muscadine
pruning.

“You can prune muscadines anytime they’re dormant,” he said. “But
in late winter the vines are less likely to be cold-damaged after
you prune.”

Muscadines, Krewer said, produce most of their flower-bearing
shoots from the bottom part of the previous year’s growth.

So the bottom — the first two to four buds — of that part of
the vines that grew during 1995 will wind up growing the shoots
and blooms and, ultimately, the grapes of ’96.

That’s how you prune your muscadines. The part of the vine that
grew after those first two to four buds of ’95 is unneeded
growth. Cut that off.

Start at the tip of each shoot, Krewer said, and follow it back
to the first raised bump on the stem, the “collar” that marks
where last year’s growth began. That should be anywhere from six
inches to five feet from the tip.

When you come to the “collar” where the ’95 growth begins, back
up to the second to fourth bud and make your pruning cut. The
vines may “bleed,” or ooze sap, Krewer said, but that won’t harm
the plants.

Besides keeping your vines from getting unmanageably tangled over
the years, pruning will also assure you of more reliable crops of
grapes.

“If you let muscadines go unpruned,” Krewer said, “they tend to
produce too heavily, which leads into alternate bearing seasons.
That becomes a feast-or-famine kind of production.”

If you’ve let your muscadines go unpruned long enough that
they’re a tangled mess already, consider cutting them back to the
original cane running down the wire.

If you do that, though, you won’t have grapes this year, since
this year’s grapes will grow only on shoots that emerge from 1995
buds.

“Unless you’re willing to almost forgo a crop this year,” Krewer
said, “I would suggest pruning one side back to the original cane
and the other side back to the bottom two to four buds of 1995
growth.

“Then next winter you can do the reverse,” he said, “severely
pruning the other side. In that way you’ll have grapes each year
and still be able to clean up your vines by next winter.”

On overgrown arbors, where you have seven or eight major canes,
“you might want to take out one or two large canes each year,” he
said, “That way you can completely renovate the arbor in a few
years.

“Each year, be sure to cut the previous season’s growth back to
two to four buds,” he said, “to keep the arbor from becoming
overgrown again.”