I’ve fallen far behind in maintaining the vines selected for my garden over the years, after a most devastating part of my life forced me to temporarily abandon my gardening ways. Hoping this year would be different, I located a rogue vine that looked promising over the winter, and cut out a considerable amount of brush around it, with the intent of arranging it properly on an easily accessible support. Maintenance then would be a simpler matter than sorting through a tangled puzzle of rampant, mixed species vines and random saplings.
To get the very best production from a grape vine, it has to be tended, and that means it must be pruned rather severely. Dead wood has to be removed, and a lot of live growth has to be as well, in order to divert the vine’s energy from more growth, into producing more and better fruit than it would do on its own. The same can be said about people.
Muscadines are pruned differently from European grapes, and if you own both, you need to know what style of pruning suits each vine the best, before you start cutting. They all must be cut, just not the same way, or you will not get good results.
But with temperatures well above average, and a brutal drought to boot, tending to them at all seemed pointless for this year, and I focused on other matters, letting them wander aimlessly all over the place. As a result there is a crop, but not much of one.
Once accustomed to being around fellow gardening enthusiasts, and, unable to find a like-minded spirit to work with, I’ve been feeling as old and abandoned as the garden, at times. We all do, especially after having been battered by a series of lean, unsuccessful seasons.
We have to fight that kind of melancholy and, if we at least go out there and start pruning or digging long enough, the chore starts feeling like an accomplishment. Every small accomplishment helps heal and energize you for more, but to accomplish anything, one must at least get started. So to make things less daunting, divide the job up and choose a small task first. Or, choose the least enjoyable. But start. One accomplishment at a time.
Dismissing those vines again- after freeing them from the brush - just because I chose to dwell more on the drought than on the potential within the vines, was a mistake. I know this because my muscadines are doing very well now, in spite of the drought, a drought which is coming to an end at last. If I had done the pruning the vines would have responded and there would have been enough grapes for jelly.
Wild muscadines have a distinct spicyness about them which makes them perfect for jelly making and which sets the final product apart from the average store bought concord grape jelly. I would add star anise pods to the juice and sometimes a small cinnamon stick before processing a batch. This is because I intended some to be used as the base a sort of dip or sauce on my version of crispy home-made egg rolls, a dish my parents very much enjoyed. Indeed, it works well anywhere hoisin sauce would.
Even without the cinnamon stick and star anise, the jelly made from muscadines or scuppernongs is pleasantly mysterious and exotic to anyone long accustomed to the popular Concord grape, which was also bred from a species native to America, albeit one from further north.
My parents used to make a point of taking us to pick wild grapes every fall up in the midwest. My mom taught us to make jelly and my father taught us to make wine from the tiny wild grapes of the Ozarks. He taught us while he taught himself, using huge glass jugs which were kept in the basement for fermentation.
There was a drier species of wild grape with a lot of seeds but little flesh, ill-suited for eating out of hand, though the flavor was good; and there was a less common species which was juicy and quite sweet, but not quite as interesting. We used both, and from them made a lot of juice which was similar to the commercial concord but a bit tangier and more citrusy. If there were enough unripe, green grapes included, the jelly would set up nice without added pectin.
Dad’s wine was also very good, and one time, when he added elderberries and some extra sugar to the jugs, he accidentally made something much like champagne, and it was absolutely delicious. The first time he opened a bottle, intending just to sample it, there was a loud “POP!” and a lovely violet foam erupted from the neck! Needless to say, we all crowded around to try the bubbly still left in the bottle!
Many hands make for speedier work - the family chore of picking and preparing the grapes was not at all unpleasant, and the reward was great, both immediately in the rows of beautiful, filled jelly jars, and also months later, when it was time to bottle the wine. In our home we kids were allowed to drink wine with my Mom’s Italian suppers. It was also an essential ingredient in her sauce, which was made from our abundant home-grown tomatoes. Mom was not into drinking alcohol, just a glass of wine now and then, but often made jokes while cooking down tomatoes and adding the essential sweet red wine. With a mischievous grin she would look at the pot and say “Two for me, one for you,” as she poured in the wine.