Small fruits (berries and grapes) are great for home gardens.
We’re lucky in
Georgia to have a rich history of small fruit breeding.

The blueberry and muscadine industries are built on cultivars
bred at the
University of Georgia Coastal Plain Experiment Station in Tifton
and the Georgia
Experiment Station in Griffin.

As I understand it, Cason Callaway, now best known for Callaway
Gardens but
also a Georgia legislator in the 1940s, saw the potential for
small fruits here.

He helped get funding for blueberry and muscadine breeding
positions. Two
young scientists, T.O. Brightwell and B.O. Fry, picked up the
breeding work the
U.S. Department of Agriculture and UGA staff had started on a
small scale in the
1920s.

After about 15 years, their efforts began to pay off. In the
late ’50s they released
the rabbiteye “Tifblue” and the muscadine “Higgins.” These were
the first of the
modern Georgia small fruit cultivars.

When Brightwell and Fry retired, Drs. Austin and Lane replaced
them. They
released the important blueberries Climax and Brightwell and the
muscadine table
grapes Fry, Summit and Tara.

Two new cultivars have just been released: Austin, an early-
ripening rabbiteye,
and Scarlett, a red-fruited muscadine.

Austin has a moderate winter chilling requirement of about 500
hours, so it’s
well-adapted to the Georgia coastal plain. If you’re in the
Piedmont or mountains
and have had success with Climax, you’ll likely have good
results with Austin, too.
Both bloom at about the same time.

The Austin berries ripen a few days ahead of Climax and have a
good flavor.
They’re firm, but not as firm as Climax. And the bushes are
quite productive.

Scarlett is a female-flowered muscadine with beautiful red
fruit. The color is much
brighter and more attractive than Higgins. The grapes are large
and taste very
good. Scarlett vines have been productive all around the
state.

If you’d like to buy plants or vines of these two new cultivars,
contact the county
extension office for a list of nurseries.

These combined 100-plus years of fruit-breeding have helped form
the South’s
largest small-fruit industry. And they help millions of Georgia
home gardeners
enjoy blueberries and muscadine grapes.

Georgia growers have more than 4,000 acres of blueberries,
mostly in the piney
flatwoods of Southeast Georgia.

In many of these counties, blueberries are now a major crop.
Bacon County alone
has seven blueberry packing or blueberry-raisin processing
plants.

More than 1,200 acres of muscadine table grapes are grown in
Georgia, too. These
are the quarter-sized “Scuppernongs” seen in Southern grocery
chains in August
and September.

A newly formed co-op has even shipped them to Yankeeland, where
expatriate
Southerners and health-conscious folks are forming a new group
of buyers.

In the past few years, USDA and Mississippi State research has
found health
benefits from blueberries and muscadine grapes.

Blueberries contain the same phytochemicals as cranberries
(another species in the
same genus), which help prevent urinary-tract infections. The
blue pigments,
called anthocyanins, are active antioxidants.

Muscadine grapes are one of the world’s richest sources of
ellagic acid (thought to
help prevent cancer) and resveratrol. That helps reduce heart
disease in the
so-called “French paradox.” (Frenchmen with rich diets who drink
red wine have
much less heart disease than expected.)

Besides these recent finds, blueberries and muscadine grapes are
also rich in
dietary fiber, which helps prevent colon cancer. They’re chock
full of vitamins
and minerals, too.