Muscadines - Anybody grow them?

[lightsoutcalls]

I just ordered 4 muscadine vines to plant in my yard.  I had a mature vine (about 6-8 years old) that my wife decided didn't need to be growing next to a pine tree in the yard a few years ago...    The year before she cut it down, it produced about 4-5 gallons of black muscadines, and was transplanted there from the woods near my uncle's house.  We have had another muscadine vine entangling itself in the lattice around our deck.  It has never produced, but this will be its 3rd year growing, so I hope it produces this year.

I ordered 2 bronze variety vines and 2 black variety from a place in Brooks, GA.  I also ordered some thornless blackberry vines that were actually developed here at the University of Arkansas agriculture program. 

[BamaProud]

Wild ones grow all over the place on our farm in South Alabama. 

[Shellwaster]

I've got them growing wild in the woods behind my house and if I can keep my dog from eating them I like to pick a few while I'm doing yard work. Of course the deer make short work of them once they begin to ripen.

[redarrow]

Are Muscadines the little ones about the size of a pea ? Kinda sour ?

[Gooserbat]

I wish they grew wild this far north, but I have to go about 100 miles farther south to get them.

[barry]

We planted some muscadines several years ago. Got the from Vernon Barnes nursery in Tenn.
Very pretty grape but skin is thick and meat is rubbery and bitter. Hope yours are better.

[lightsoutcalls]

We planted some muscadines several years ago. Got the from Vernon Barnes nursery in Tenn.
Very pretty grape but skin is thick and meat is rubbery and bitter. Hope yours are better.

There are some varieties that you are supposed to be able to eat the skins, but all that I have ever had do have tough skins.  The best way I have found to eat them fresh is bite in, suck out the juice, savor the flavor and spit out the rest.  The seeds are supposed to have nutritional value, but only when crushed.  The skins are also supposed to have nutritional value, but have to be dried and powdered from what I have read.

The size of the smallest ripe muscadines I have seen are about the size of a penny.  There are larger varieties.  We always called the little grapes "possum grapes".  They are a completely different fruit. 

[redarrow]

Possum grapes are what I was thinking of.