Looks like a good year for muscadine/ scuppernong fruit.
I have 5 or 6 muscadine/grape varieties that the deer usually wipe out before they're good and ripe. These pics are the public vines downtown with 8 or 10 varieties... I'll usually eat a few handfuls and move on, but the 5 gallon bucket pickers that grab everything ripe or not will soon wipe them out. Dang deer and bucket pickers; that's alright, I'll get my share with the daily handfuls or two. Natures Candy!

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Hubby and I have been enjoying the figs of Maria, the neighbor from Naples Italy. Just enough of her tree hangs over the fence to keep us in fresh figs for the last month.

My muscadine crop was about one-third to one-fourth normal this year. We got about 10 gallons from vines that often produce 30-40 gallons. They were about a month later than usual, too. They were very tasty.

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Georgia On My Mind

Public vines?


Now that is pretty cool

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Still Running Against the Wind

Some 41 years ago when I was drilling for coal in north west Alabama I was teaching a new person how to log the coal.He was from somewhere in New York and he was amazed at the size of wild muscadine vines near the areas we drilled.The vines were at least 20 feet high and stretched several 100 feet along side the pasture we were exploring.He was also amazed that you could actually eat the things.When he returned to New York we made sure he had several gallons to go back with him.

There was a place in Lavonia, Ga. that served a Venison saddle with Muscadine jelly that was amazing-been well over 30 years ago, and I still remember it. The name of the place was "Southern Trace."

I have 4 bearing tame muscadines here at the house. So far I have picked and others too 25 gallons. There is maybe 5-7 gallons still out there to get in a few days. My best crop ever and mine were almost 2 weeks early. Just shows you never can tell about growing things how they will turn out until they are done. The deer and bears so far have not bothered mine but the coons and possums tried to make raids but succumbed to the effects of 22 bullets.

I like the vine watering service. I wonder how many dog biscuits that costs per week?

We had 'em growing wild on the farm in Md. Wife made some jelly with 'em every couple of years. We had Concord grapes and the jelly from them was much tastier. We also grew and harvested American Chestnuts, Shellbark Hickory, beechnuts and hazelnuts(filberts) To get the chestnuts and hazelnuts you had to beat the darn skwerls off though. They would almost fight you for the hazelnuts. My father in law made wine from those wild grapes though. He thought it was great...not being much of a drinker I much preferred my brandied peaches. Here in Wyoming I can't even grow grapes. We do have some local cherries though..I buried some jars of them for brandied cherries this year

The elderly gentleman my father and his brother purchased this land from said: when he was a child this place was covered in huge chestnut trees. He said they were so big the canopies blocked the light and it was clear of any undergrowth or brush. Don't you know that was some awesome hunting being able to see so far in the chestnut forest ( bet the native Indians walked lightly). Anyhow by pure luck I wound up with a chestnut tree that was purchased through the forest service Arbor Day tree sale. The trees were twigs with no leaves and cost a dollar each. I bought 10 varieties in twos, planted them in pairs on the edge of the yard. Where there should have been two redbuds , I had one redbud and a mystery tree. After a few years it put on fruit and I discovered it was a chestnut tree( the blight killed them all many years ago and the virus still lives in the ground). I went to the forest service to ask about their chestnut tree program telling him I had bought one from them. He replied: there's no program and we've never sold chestnut trees. Uh ok, thanks for your time. This chestnut tree is about 40ft tall and makes nuts every year.

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Just went and checked the hazelnut bush.... it didn't produce again. The fuyu persimmon tree that produces 100s each year , has not one fruit . N Alabama had a hard freeze late last spring, it whacked a lot of fruit here.

A funny chestnut story; I was so proud to have them I'd peel and eat a bellyful every fall. One year after gathering too many to eat, I stored some in the kitchen cabinet for later. Digging them out in the winter to enjoy some 'roasted on the open fire'. They were full of worms.... now I know those worms didn't crawl in the house, up the walls, and into the kitchen cabinets to eat those chestnuts....yuck.... I ain't eaten a worm rich chestnut since.

ETA: couple more of that 66-2 Alabama 1986 Officers Memorial.
1 of 55.... I bought it test fired only? With the box...it had a sign to not rotate the cylinder....I probably dry fired it a hundred times while they were doing the paper work. It's went from a queen' to a hard shooter ��

If Rusty1953 was a country boy with chestnut trees,,,;it would put a smile on his face when he saw them laying on the ground in the fall��

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I planted some chestnuts that a local bank was giving out as seeds in the 1950s. As advertising, as in making things grow. Today some of them still survive, and bear fruit. I’ll get some pics tomorrow.

Best Regards, Les

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The original chestnut trees will never return.... the new ones are a Japanese clone to resist the old virus.... the japs also poisoned the American koi fish business.... they are the cultural threat.... the smart people.... if you will...

We had 4 apple trees, a Butternut Tree and 3 Black Walnut trees in the yard when we bought the farm in 1984. I planted 6 grape vines in 3 verities, 8 apple trees and 2 pear trees. Theses all were alive when we moved 4 yeas ago. I planted most likely 40 cherry and numerous peach and plumb trees. They usually lived 3 to 6 years then would die. I finally had ONE Montmorency cherry that bore fruit! at 9 years I was ecstatic. I cleared a plot and planted 20 of that verity. The trees I bought were from a blighted nursery, They killed my fruit bearer! The store I bought them from, imported them into Ohio without any inspection or certification. The Ohio Department of Agriculture fined them! But that never brought back my only producing cherry tree.

The saddest thing was, My wife's great grandmother had that verity of tree, and all the family recipes are based on that level of tartness/sweetness. I had gotten only 1 cherry pie that tasted the way it was meant to; It was like tasting Heaven!

Ivan

Actually the original American Chestnuts still survive in limited numbers. The nuts we had were American chestnuts. There was(is) a very large one on the farm next to the one we owned. We collected nuts from it every year. We planted the nuts by heeling them in. About one in a 100 grew. Some died off quickly some otherslived quite a while and about 8 have been there since the 1960s and 70s. The old saw about spreading chestnut tree is just that. In a woods they grow straight and tall. When we sold the place in 2005 we had some 8 yr old trees that were 35 ft tall...skinny but tall. American chestnuts look different than Chinese type...and taste better. The large trees don't bear every year and the squirrels hardly let a nut hit the ground

mmm


Dang sir; it's obvious you're proficient.$"!

Oh forget it, I thought you were talking about BACON!!!! Now that's breakfast candy!

My dad bought a 210 acre farm in Eastern Ohio's hill country in 1972. He lived their until about 8 years ago.

In the old fence rows were a verity of Hickory, he call Pig Nuts. They were about twice the size of a Shagbark Hickory nut, and almost tasteless/very mild flavor. These trees were 3 to 4 feet in diameter back then. It took dad some years to transfer his entire operation to that farm. By the time he built a house and moved it was 1986 and every "Pig Nut" was dead, and one bad winter storm toppled them into his pastures. My best friend and I would camp there in the mid 70's, we could find and eat wild foods for the entire campout and not touch our "provisions". Some of the squirrels were the size of ground hogs and tasted fantastic!.......40 to 45 year old day dreams!

Ivan

When we lived in rural Okaloosa county Florida we had scuppernongs (which the locals called scupplins), gooseberries, rhubarb and kumquats. Mom already knew how to make rhubarb and gooseberry pies but, being new to the colonies, she had to learn from the neighbors how to make scuppernong and kumquat preserves.

I sure do miss that stuff.

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When my old roommate's grandfather was still around we would go muscadine picking once a year on the county roads around his ranch. He would then make homemade muscadine wine and bottle it up in cases of plastic 1.75 liter whiskey bottles. That stuff kept us "warm" all winter long. Of course, you had to drink it all before it got too long into the next year or it became a damn fine paint stripper.

There is a bottle under the chair just right of center.

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Transferring invasive plant species from the nursery is a problem most homeowners never consider. I battle several prolific plant invasions yearly. Who knows what all kinds of insects and worms are brought in. I'm considering taking out all of the fruit trees. Bores have killed all but one apple tree... it'll probably die next year. Lost this plum tree to lead poisoning this year.

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Our house and barn in Md were built using mostly chestnut. House was built in 1777 though. When I was a kid in the 50s there were lots of old dead chestnuts laying on the ground deeper in the woods. Ones close to the edges had all been cut for firewood in the 40s or so. I saw about a hundred or so that were still alive and most did have blight and died. There was a Philadelphia lawyer(really) who had a farm on the Corsica River in Md who had planted a large amount of Chestnuts(American) and I got a bushel of nuts from there when I was guiding hunters on the farm. Father in law and I planted them in various pieces of woods around our end of the county. Some grew but I haven't been there to check them in 16 years. Someone told of pig nuts dying in the 80s..Many trees in hedge rows died when the farmers started growing crops without cultivating.. Round up killed many hedgerows off completely and others were pushed out to get more crop ground. Our wild grapes grew in a hedgerow and the hazelnuts were planted at the end of a hedgerow. Squirrels still found 'em

My grandmother, who lived in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, had an American chestnut in her backyard. In the early 1960s, after I got home from elementary school, we would go out and gather the chestnuts.

By the late 60s, the tree was about dead, victim of the blight.

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When I win the lottery, I am going to live on a vineyard.

Please clarify; Will you live in the vineyard, or in the wine cellar?

Ivan

Growing up in south central Alabama we knew scuppernongs as scupplins and muscadines as bullaces. A search shows those as archaic names used mostly in the Deep South. Very seldom hear the words now.